From The Other Side
by Awdures
Summary: Knuckles has made a discovery and the choices he makes, based upon it, will change him forever.
1. 00 Prologue

**I tend to feel Sonic stories ought to have a 'version of reality' explanation attached to them, there's so many variations of canon. This one refers fairly explicitly to Fleetway's and the earlier games' version of affairs in that the basic premise is that Knuckles is the last of the echidna and doesn't remember why... It does rather diverge from there...**

* * *

It was in Ice Cap Knuckles had found the information. Deep in a cold, dry cave, below even the ice caverns. The paper - if it was paper, for it was slick and stiff and almost wax-like to the touch - was near perfectly preserved there in the dark and the cold and the dry, still air.

He spent a long time there, looking, his eyes and tongue dry and uncomfortable, limbs stiff from the chill and inactivity, head aching from squinting in the flickering torchlight. He moved slowly, thoughtfully, even after surfacing, until the snow and wind drove him into a run back to more clement areas of the Island, there to further study the rough sketched copy of what he had found.

It took him a weeks to decide to act on what he'd found. Weeks of indecision, whether to believe it, whether to follow it, whether to tell anyone. When he decided "yes" to all but the third, it took further weeks to act on it. Slowly, carefully, planning. There must be no dramatic changes of routine, nothing to tempt the curious, nothing to draw attention. The Island, and its Emerald must remain safe, distant, inaccessible, regardless of what he found or didn't find.

Summer on the surface would be best. He could glide a long way on summer thermals, cover further ground in the cooler evening hours, be a long way from the Island by the time he was likely to encounter anyone who might ask questions.

So he waited through the month and a half to early summer. Sonic arrived unannounced in a blur of activity and noise and Tails's chatter and an overwhelming impression that he'd popped in after just a few days instead of half a season. And then he was gone again and since his visits, while random, were generally infrequent, his departure presented a window of time.

Knuckles collected the pack he had prepared, walked to the edge of the Island and looked down at the western horizon where boggy grassland slowly gave way to thick, tangled jungle. The boundary stretched for as far as he could see, but that was okay. He didn't need to check the sketchmap at the top of the pack. The broadest river leading west across the open plain entered the jungle at a near perpendicular angle two thirds of the way towards where the view became misty with distance. It was a start.

He hesitated one last time, there was no easy way to change his mind past this point, but he had prepared, and really he had already decided.

He fixed his eyes on that river, checked the security of the straps on his supplies, and launched himself onto the warm air from the land below.


	2. 01 The Jungle's Edge

Shaski glanced up briefly at a pleased cry from overhead, somewhere high in the tree, then returned his attention to the watch. The area was generally safe, that's why it was a popular family foraging spot but you could never be entirely sure. There were low-animals in the jungle, big cats, non-sapient but smart enough hunters nonetheless. Predators. The wind shifted and the smoke which had been drifting up into the branches to subdue the discovered beehive caught in his throat. The wind was cooler too with the edge of day.

"Now or never!" he called up. "Time to head back!"

The would-be honey gatherer in the tree was his eldest daughter and the next he heard she was already down and laughing, sticky and triumphant even through the few stings she hadn't managed to avoid.

"Good job," he allowed as one by one the others finished picking the last of the fruit, secured it in bundles and prepared to head back to the village. The other hunters on the perimeter of the clearing joined them and Shaski led the way back. He was looking forward to the honey after the meal tonight. The fruit and other common forage would be shared with the village, but risky treats like honey were for the climber's family.

The group arrived back as the sun was setting and most dispersed underground almost immediately. A few remained at the outdoor workshelters to prepare anything that needed a fire, or to enjoy the last of the daylight.

Curaca, the village leader was among those watching the sunset. At her side was the grizzled seer, Olec, his fur now grey and turning slowly to white. Neither looked round as Shaski approached but Olec spoke nonetheless.

"Shaski. You have been outside the village. Did you feel it there too?"

Shaski frowned, shook his head. "I don't.."

"Something coming, only a whisper yet, but coming. You can see it in the sunset."

Shaski looked but saw nothing that could be called ominous. The sky was clear, though he knew the seer often sought meaning in the shape and movement of the clouds there were none tonight. The sky shaded smoothly from blue overhead to golden where the sun touched the horizon and seemed to pass through every shade on the spectrum between the two, even...

"Green," said Olec and it was true Shaski realised.

"Unlucky shade," Curaca commented. Shaski nodded. Not green itself of course - practically the whole world around them was green, natural leaf and plant shades. But this shade, near luminous blue-green was a bad omen. The colour of monsters from scary stories and of a danger from history so ancient it was almost a story itself.

"On the edge of light and dark,"Olec continued, but paused as the sun slipped lower and turned, slowly from gold to red. "Green. Red. Darkness." He turned to the eastern sky where the daylight lingered.

"Blue to follow?" he said uncertainly.

Curaca looked to Shaski and shrugged, her patience with portents apparently exhausted. She touched Olec's shoulder.

"Is there anything to be done?"

A slow head shake. "Not by us."

* * *

To Knuckles' disgust, but not surprise, the lift ran out a mile or so short of the swampy grassland. He landed ankle deep in dark, tepid, peaty water and knee deep in some plant halfway between reed and grass. He glanced at the sun on the horizon, noting with relief that he had sufficient time before true sunset to be out of this and into the shelter of the jungle edge. This would be no place to be stuck overnight.

He pulled one thoroughly waterlogged boot out of the mire and set off on the shortest course to drier 'd only gone a few steps when it became obvious that the shortest course was not necessarily the wisest. This was brought home mainly by the moment when his leading foot sank nearly to the thigh upon putting his weight on it. After lurching forward and narrowly avoiding going face first into the bog, he pulled back and reconsidered.

He detoured cautiously around the deeper patch and found a solid tuffet of springy grass where he sat down and pulled his boots off, tying them to his pack to dangle behind him. He was about to get up and try again when some sound made him look round, instinctively jumping to his feet. He couldn't immediately place it - splashing perhaps, though the air and water were still.

Most beasts would have called out at this point. A 'Hello' or an 'Anyone there?' Knuckles did not. He stood watchfully, scanning the landscape until he identifed the approaching ripple. He waited in silence until he could identify two frogs, one larger than the other. The smaller still bore a residual tail. Parent and child? Almost certainly no threat then. He would have ignored them and returned his attention to getting over the marsh but the adult frog called out to him before he could move.

"Alright there?"

The frog stood up from the water and smiled as broadly as only his species could. The infant trod water beside him.

"Not lost are you?"

Knuckles hesitated but didn't get a chance to decide how to answer.

"Come over the dryway did you? It's easy to stray off it. Loads do. Always putting 'em right we are. Not been this way before have you? D'you need a steer back?"

"No. Yes" Knuckles blinked at this volley then caught up, belatedly answered the second question first, corrected himself, realised how confused his answer now sounded and started again.

"No, I don't know the area. Yes, I would very much appreciate a direction back onto the path."

The small frog was grinning, almost giggling, earning himself an admonishing look.

"No problem. We can point you right." The frog climbed further up on the drier patch and hoisted the smaller one out of the water. They both paddled on ahead, the older one beckoning. "So where you going then? I'm Broga by the way. This's my lad Benba."

Knuckles adjusted his pack, trying to stop his dangling boots from swinging quite so much. "Only to the edge of the jungle today I think. Where the river comes out. I'll camp there overnight."

Broga nodded, apparently unsurprised by this and insufficiently interested in his end destination or name to ask. "Climbs steep there the ground, you'll have dry footing in no time."

"Good."

Broga smiled at his vehemence.

"Yuk! Dry feet!" Benba put in.

Knuckles had nothing to add to this, his supply of small talk being extremely small and his experience with children even smaller. Fortunately Broga himself seemed perfectly happy to chatter on, filling the silence with observations about the area which might or might not come in useful down the line.

Knuckles, whose previous experience with surface dwellers was almost entirely limited to Sonic and Tails, was starting to wonder if they all talked this much, when they reached the edge of the swamp and the promised, short but steep slope up to the undergrowth.

"River's still a bit to the north, but I reckon you've got the light," Broga said.

Knuckles nodded. "Yes, I think so. Thank you."

"Safe trip then!" Broga waved cheerfully and Benba gave a wild flappy hand sort of wave too before they initially paddled, then struck off and swam, back the way they'd come. Knuckles wonder how far they'd detoured for him and what they'd been doing beforehand. They hadn't mentioned dropping anything to guide him. Had he owed more than a verbal thank you? He frowned but turned on his way and head north on the narrow strip of reedy ground between the swamp and the jungle. The undergrowth was far too thick to get through here. He hoped it would be clearer at the river but was disappointed. Tangled vines, thick woody undergrowth, mossy fallen logs and leafy new growth completed blocked all but the river itself. He could tear his way through eventually but the sun was setting with equatorial speed and he was more tired than he'd expected. Too long spreadeagled to glide then too long in an unnatural high-stepping, mud-dragging gait across the bog.

Instead of pressing on, he ate lightly from his supplies and tore only enough of the undergrowth to burrow in out of the wind and give at least casual cover from any onlooker, before curling up and falling asleep.

He woke with his heart pounding,awake and on his feet in an instant, scrambling clear of the cover. The morning was very newly dawned, the sky still silvering from grey to blue but already filled with birdsong. Knuckles stood staring around, unable to say what had woken him and in such hammering alarm. He listened carefully to the birdsong, but it was all low-birds, no words in it, no territorial shouts of warning or calls from lookouts.

A nightmare then? He didn't remember it if so. Perhaps it was only the dislocation of waking up on the wrong ground. Ground missing the constant almost below-awareness thrum of the chaos energies, the thicker, warmer air.

The initial birdsong was fading as the dawn passed and Knuckles realised quite how long he'd been lost in thought. He took one last long careful look around him then, satisfied there was no threat, he reached back into the undergrowth to pull out his pack. He'd travelled relatively lightly as far as food was concerned, aware that beyond a certain point, carrying more would slow him down which would mean he'd need more again and so on. He'd need to find his own, or locate and deal with the various settlements marked on his map en route. His preference was for the former but he was aware of the risk of finding neither. He'd thought about it a long time before leaving, whether there was any way of making certain his supplies lasted but as there was no scale on his map he'd concluded that there wasn't. He could take the risk or he could not go.

Breakfast was not the time to skimp though. He'd reached his first waypoint, the only one he was certain of, in good time and wanted the energy for the day's travel. He ate well on the dried fruit and seeds he'd brought, refilled his water container although he expected to spend the rest of the day or longer near the river and secured his pack.

Before him the river disappeared off into the undergrowth. Wide and placid and green with weed, he couldn't see the bottom and there wasn't much of a bank to speak of either - if there ever had been the river was full to brimming over it. The impassable undergrowth extended to the water's edge on both sides. It was a problem.

After a moment's thought, Knuckles allowed himself a short spell of time to scout up and down the jungle edge for a break in the ground cover - perhaps he'd be able to make his way back to the river- he knew from his experience in the forests of the Floating Island that if a wood was deep and dark enough the ground would be clearer further in - no light meant no plants. This thick tangled growth probably didn't extend far

The were no obvious routes in and he headed back to the river. He could cut, or tear through of course but it'd cost time and energy. He pulled down one branch and looked at it thoughtfully. Would it cost more or less time and energy than making a raft to travel on the river itself? He concluded after a moment that he didn't absolutely have to decide - if he was ripping into the brush anyway he might as well keep aside any suitable branches and see how he progressed. Pleased with this realization he threw himself into the work and had barely worked up a sweat when he pulled away a swathe of a clinging, ivy-like plant to reveal the remains of what looked like a wooden jetty.

He paused, considering it before testing his weight on it. It swayed, the posts beneath rotten, thought the deck itself seemed sound. It was the work of moments to rip the boards from the supporting posts and set them on the water where they floated benignly, the perfect basis for a raft. He kept one of the longer branches back and after testing the depth of the water concluded that he could easily punt his away along without a set of oars.

After a quick check on the sun he climbed cautiously aboard and started upriver. He was poling against the current, which although not fast was surprisingly powerful. The movement of the water, and the unchanging greenery around him made it hard to keep track of time or distance and in spite of a few stops where he'd thrown out a rope to stay his drift back down stream while he rested, the day seemed used up in no time at all. There was still no break in the undergrowth to either side, so he tethered the raft once more and curled up where he was to sleep, once again dipping into his supplies for supper. He looked out at the taller trees he could see over the tangle of lower plants. Some of those were bound to be fruit and ripe too at this time of year. If hadn't found a break in the undergrowth by the end of the next day he decided he'd have to push his way through to look for fresh supplies, even if he came back to the raft afterwards.

He slept badly, always dimly aware of the risk of rolling over and off the small raft and woke cramped and stiff in the middle of the night. He had enough trouble getting back to sleep that he considered leaving the raft and clearing himself a spot on the bank in spite of his tiredness, but before he'd fully decided had fallen back to sleep after all. He slept restlessly on and off until dawn, never quite sure at what point he'd actually woken and decided that there'd be no more nights on the water. He hurried breakfast, determined to get as far up the river as possible, and hopefully off it altogether that day.

The terrain and and plantlife continued unchanged and he pushed on well past midday until forced to stop with the sun three quarters to the horizon because his arms wouldn't take any more. He tied up the raft and ate, too tired to pursue the idea of tunneling through the undergrowth to look for fresher food.

Progress was slower when he moved again and he was beginning to resign himself to another night on, or beside the river when a movement in the water caught his attention. At first he thought it was a shallow patch, the water disturbed over stones or a mudbank but it was moving and purposefully. An arrow shaped ripple progressing quickly towards him. No frog this time, too fast and sleek.

Knuckles shifted his grip on the pole he'd been driving the raft forward with, ready to strike out if need be. For a few moments he drifted down river, watching the approaching shape. Then, almost leisurely, a long, toothy jaw almost as long as Knuckles himself, emerged from the water.

Alligator.

Suddenly the raft felt a lot more fragile.


	3. 02 Villages and Meetings

The gape-jawed alligator and Knuckles surveyed one another.

Even after some years knowing Vector, Knuckles couldn't always tell crocodilian grins from a more aggressive expression without context and here he had none. He held his stance on the raft, still drifting, still poised with the branch and his own claws. Waited for the first move to be made.

"Either I'm still napping, or you're a long way from home, little one." The alligator kept pace with the raft as she spoke.

This was better than an immediate attack, even leaving aside 'little one', although given that the alligator's jaw alone was almost as long as he was, Knuckles didn't feel inclined to contest the comment without a more definite reason.

"I'm a long way from home." Neutral, careful, no indication that this was a vulnerability in any way. Knuckles stood, still guarded, but met the alligator's eyes steadily. "What about you?"

Her jaw dropped open again and perhaps it was a smile because her next words were, "Na, na, just up the river a meander. At the village. Where you headed? D'you need a night stop?"

There was a village on Knuckles' map at the point he was supposed to leave the river. He'd planned to check his state of rations there. Perhaps he wasn't as delayed as he'd feared.

"I had planned to visit for supplies," he allowed. "Will people trade with me?"

"Sure, sure," the alligator rolled over languidly in the water. "Need a shove to speed things up?"

Knuckles considered his position if attacked on the raft from below and concluded that the angle would be such that he'd have plenty to time to react.

He gave a cautious smile. "I would be grateful."

The alligator manoeuvred herself around behind the raft.

"You may want to sit down,"

Knuckles shook his head, his trust didn't extend that far.

The alligator's shrug rippled the water. "I hope you've got good balance."

Knuckles did. The raft practically skimmed over the water and he rode it in a half crouch. Bubbles burst at the water surface, he suspected the alligator was laughing. Perhaps she was honest enough. Knuckles sought for a comment to indicate friendliness.

"The are zones where people do this sort of thing for fun," he said after a moment's thought. "On waves at the beach."

More bubbles but the alligator appeared too focussed on swimming to answer.

The sun was down by the time the came in view of a clear shallow bank. A jetty stood near where the undergrowth ended, rather like the one Knuckles had demolished, albeit in better condition. The alligator nudged the raft against it, then lunged up onto the bank. Knuckles watched, disconcerted, before stepping onto the shore himself. It would have been a challenge after all if she'd jumped him on the water.

Instead she stuck out her hand, "Dani, since I didn't tell your earlier."

Knuckles caught himself hesitating and took the proffered hand before the pause got too long.

Dani didn't immediately let go, turning her own hand to look at the claws on the back of Knuckles'.

"Hmm, Glad you didn't turn out to be looking for trouble."

Her words were so close to Knuckles" thoughts that it startled a smile from him.

"No. I'm not looking for trouble."

"Well, welcome to Big River. Did you say you needed supplies?"

"Yes." Knuckles looked around. In spite of the encroaching darkness there were still plenty of people about. The majority were alligators but not all. He saw a number of primates, lizards of various sorts, a tiger. They stood in groups, talking, or carried packs or tools or wheeled barrows. The end of a working day. The river with its jetty seemed to form one edge of a sort of village square - an ageing jaguar was lighting lanterns on posts at the edge of it. Another edge was formed by a long hall, with a wooden roof. Around the rest of the perimeter were a few buildings laid out as stalls although the counters were empty and behind those an assortment of houses, all thatched with the long broad heavy leaves from the jungle plants.

Dani glanced at the empty stalls. "All closed up for the day. You'll have to nightstop after all. You can doss down in the hall if you don't mind a late night - there's always a few talking the moon down. Or I can ask around for some space if you'd rather turn in. You won't want to lay out tonight, it's going to bucket down once it cools off."

Knuckles had a good weather sense and suspected she was right. He didn't really want to stay the night at all though he did need a top up on supplies. He had slept badly the last two nights and knew full well that he wouldn't get much rest trying to relax among strangers. But then, if he really thought they were a danger then he would have to get far enough away, in the dark, to find somewhere safer to sleep and take the risks of the jungle instead.

"The hall will be fine," he said, deciding.

Later in the evening he would have to admit it was actually rather interesting. The people were friendly and curious, though he told them little more than trivial anecdotes about his crossing of the swamp and navigating the river. They shared in return something of how they lived and traded along the river. He was invited to join a meal of fish which he was fairly indifferent to and roasted grubs which were fantastic and twice the size of any he'd ever found on the Island.

Slowly the size of the group dwindled as the night wore on, and eventually he was bid a final goodnight and the hall was left empty. A fire still glowed, well banked and Knuckles settled down at a comfortable distance from it where he slept lightly but undisturbed.

In the morning he was given breakfast but traded a couple of tiny silver coins he'd found a cache of years ago, for as much dried food as he could carry and an extra waterbottle.

He was readying to leave and thinking about whether to locate Dani to make his farewells since she'd brought him here, when he was called over by a tall, crested lizard who Knuckles thought he understood to be someone of authority in the village - although it was so informal here it was hard to tell.

He beckoned Knuckles into a larger than average hut on the corner of the square. Knuckles followed warily, pausing in the doorway for his eyes to adjust to the lower light. The hut sounded empty apart from the two of them. Knuckles sought for the lizard's name, he'd definitely heard it.

"Madvel," he said, remembering. "Is there something you wanted from me?"

The lizard regarded him.

"Not _from_ you. More _for_ you."

Knuckles frowned, wondering what he'd misunderstood. "I don't-"

"I know what you're looking for," Madvel said, "You're not the first to pass though."

Knuckles felt as though he'd been doused in cold water, the shock was so complete. But it had to be a mistake didn't it? He couldn't have heard what he thought he had, or he must have made too much of it, or-

Madvel was still talking.

"All of them thinking they were the only ones to find it. A map. Every one alone, all so wound up in anxiety and doubt."

Knuckles had to consciously slow his breathing.

"Why are you telling me?"

Madvel smiled gently. "And they all ask that. All of them suspicious. Why wouldn't I since I know and you don't? As we gave you supper because we had it and you didn't and a place to sleep. Because that's what civilised beasts do. We're not low-animals fighting over territory or prey or mates after all."

Knuckles searched Madvel's face for any sign of dishonesty, little skill though he had in recognising it. He could make nothing out.

"Thank you," he said finally. He paused, wanting to ask more yet uncertain what exactly to ask. but then there was only one real question wasn't there.

"Did they find it?"

Madvel spread his hands regretfully. "I'm sorry. I don't know. But they didn't come back this way whether or not they did."

Which could mean anything of course, Knuckles knew at once.

"I see." Knuckles stood in thoughtful silence for a moment before adding, "Thank you," again and turning to leave.

Dani was waiting outside when he emerged and greeted him with, "They said you were with Madvel. You're leaving now?

"Yes." Knuckles was still too busy thinking abut what he'd heard to make conversation but managed to thank her as well.

She shrugged. "No bother. Safe journey."

Knuckles nodded. "I hope so."

He glanced at the sky, seeking his direction from the sun through the branches and approached the edge of the village.

He glanced back only once, to see the village serene, nestled in its sunlit clearing. Then he was into deeper cover once again.

He made good time the following day and a half, in spite of an increasing steep upward slope and jungle floor increasing littered with mossy boulders. Twice he forded shallow streams and his way was seriously slowed only once by overgrowth impinging on his path where it had apparently grown disused. He took a cue from a party of flying squirrels who were gliding from tree to tree above him. Startled to find someone not of their species using the same trick they joined him for a while, laughing and chattering. Knuckles again found himself lost for a reaction and was not sorry when their paths diverged, apparently friendly though they'd been.

It was approaching sunset on the second day since he'd left Big River when he saw it, and even then at first thought it was a trick of the slanting sunbeams. But no, it was real, straight lines and right angles amid the tangled, twisted trees and tumbled rounded rocks. A village up ahead. A village clearly marked on his map and of which he had come far in hope of finding.

He stopped, suddenly hesitant to find out, not knowing meant hoping could continue but knowing was the whole reason to come. Almost without thinking about it he slipped into a more cautious, measured tread, no longer hiking and not quite creeping. Moving slow and silent. Watchful. Listening.

Populated at least. There were voices. Adults and children, male and female. No sound of alarm or aggression.

Suddenly he wanted to see it, complete before entering it.

He scaled a tree, crept out along a branch, peered between the leaves to the clearing.

The building were much sparser than Big River, open sided shelters, one or two with a rough woven windbreak. The main village would be underground of course, he could see the tunnel entrances, marked by carved stones, the designs too intricate to see clearly from this distance. But none of that held his attention for more than seconds because of the people.

Because the people - the people were _his_ people.

They stood in groups or worked alone or in pairs, every colour from russet tan through yellow straw through to almost his own scarlet. Long, slender spines, swinging with their movement or the evening breeze, children roughhousing on the damp ground, all hands and feet and disproportionately longer spines they'd not yet really grown into, elders with fur greying and backs now bent, adolescents swaggering one moment and forgetting themselves in childish laughter the next.

Dozens of them. Echidnas.

Knuckles' grip on the branch loosened and the adrenaline of nearly falling brought him back to himself enough to realise he was trembling. Suddenly he was afraid that if he didn't go to them now, he'd lose his nerve entirely, retreat back into the forest and the irrational idea gripped him that if he did such a thing then this whole place would just vanish like a mirage.

All at once he leapt forward from the branch, gliding through the remaining trees between himself and the village.

Shaky with emotion and nerves and excitement he uncharacteristically fumbled the landing and stumbled, almost ending up in a heap at the feet of one of the groups. He regained his balance, staring around, and trying to find anything at all to say. He wasn't generally given to such impulsive dashes and, close to, he was suddenly aware that the other echidnas were considerably larger than he was and every last one staring at him in shocked disbelief.

He spread his arms, open handed in a muddled gesture of greeting and harmless intentions but his normally confident introduction stuck in his throat and the largest of the female echidnas stepped forward and spoke first.

"Who are you?"

Knuckles couldn't clearly identify any emotion in the tone, of either welcome or aggression, although there was perhaps something of his own habitual wariness which he recognised.

Pulling his scattered self control back together, he answered in a similar plain tone.

"I am called Knuckles."

The other echidna's muzzle twitched as she glanced down at Knuckles' still outspread hands.

"I'm sure you are, but I asked your _name_."

Knuckles stared, uncertain whether to be indignant or dismayed. After a moment he met the other echidna's eyes steadily. Behind her a broad shouldered, russet furred echidna, carrying a spear stepped to a flanking position at her shoulder.

"Knuckles," Knuckles repeated firmly. "Of the Floating Island. Guardian of the Master Emerald."

That at least he was certain of.

The reaction was instant uproar.

The echidna with the spear leapt forward with a speed that belied his bulk, bringing the weapon with in a sweeping blow for Knuckles' head.


	4. 03 Of Guardians

The echidna who'd leapt at him had moved like lightening and only Knuckles' own exceptional reflexes turned the savage spear blow aimed at his head into a glancing knock with the shaft that sent him staggering out of arm's reach.

"Why?" Knuckles demanded, backing further away and trying to watch a dozen potential assailants at once. A loose circle was forming around him. Some of the echidnas had the lean, sharp look of habitual hunters and warriors, but even the villagers, though hanging back, were circling, obstructing his routes out of the place. Those with children had pulled them away or picked them up and backed off.

The expressions on the ring of faces were no longer hard to read. Anger and fear and the only answer to his 'why' was a barked command which sent the six echidnas which Knuckles had already mentally tagged as the fighters rushing forwards.

Knuckles was used to pitched battles, even used to being outnumbered, but these were his own kind, or almost so, and they matched him for speed and stamina and over-matched him for size and strength.

He reeled as he failed to dodge a heavy fist to the temple, struck out at his attacker but giddy and bloodied, missed by inches. Someone caught his right arm as he raised it for a strike and sheer momentum let him wrench it free at the cost of a sickening shooting pain he could only hope was torn muscle not broken joints.

He stumbled backwards, stretching out the uninjured arm half in a vain attempt to ward them off, half in something close to supplication.

"Why?" he repeated. "Please! I don't understand why we're fighting. I came here to find you -"

His increasingly desperate attempts to explain were broken off when his arms were grabbed from behind. This time he had no momentum on his side and was caught and held. Something shifted in his right shoulder, broken after all and the pain was dizzying.

For a moment he closed his eyes, injured and exhausted he could hear the Master Emerald's soft note at the back of his mind. The suggestion and the promise of it.

But he didn't call on it. Not yet. For all the injury done it seemed clear now that they'd fought to capture not outright kill and he seemed in no imminent danger of death. That and he couldn't quite shake the certainly that they must surely be fighting over a huge misunderstanding.

The female echidna stepped forward, the spear-wielder close at her side. Knuckles noted almost absently that at any rate he'd have his own share of bruises to show for the day.

"My name is Curaca," the female said. "I am the leader here and you will answer my questions."

Knuckles eyed her belligerently, pain and confusion shading into anger.

"You only asked me one, and answering that nearly got my head knocked off. Would you like to make me a better offer?"

Again the slight twitch of the muzzle, as though Curaca was almost, but not quite, amused.

"You claim to have come from the Floating Island. To be a guardian there?"

Knuckles bristled at the word 'claim'.

"I am Guardian."

The spear wielder stepped forward.

"He's telling the truth, Curaca – look at him, he's actually proud of it!"

Curaca gave him a quelling look.

"Patience, Shaski. The truth will not be hidden."

She turned back to Knuckles.

"How long have you been a guardian?"

Something in the phrasing was niggling at Knuckles' attention but the question drove it out of his mind and he looked away, suddenly flustered.

"I... am not certain."

"Not certain?" Curaca sought to regain eye contact. Knuckles evaded it.

"I do not remember."

There was muttering from the assembled crowd. Curaca acknowledged it with a hand but didn't turn away, her attention on Knuckles.

"And do you remember becoming a guardian?"

Knuckles met her eyes, emotions awash with a confused mixture of defiance at this treatment and a desire to be conciliatory and undo whatever misunderstanding had led to it.

"No."

Curaca looked merely thoughtful at this.

"And why did you come here?"

"I found a map. It marked the place. It was so remote I thought maybe... I wanted to know if there were any echidnas left on the surface."

The tone of the muttering grew angrier and again Curaca quieted it.

"We are not many," she allowed. "But the population is sustainable. And what of the Floating Island? How many remain there?"

Knuckles' jaw dropped open, stunned into incoherence. That was what was wrong with the phrasing, what had niggled at him. " _A_ guardian" she'd spoken of. "A", not " _The_ " - One among many.

She didn't know. Didn't know Knuckles was the last. The only one left. Didn't know the Island was empty.

Knuckles' mind raced. She didn't know and why would she ask? Not from concern for their welfare if the response to Knuckles introducing himself was indicative. To assess their chances of an attack?

Knuckles shook his head.

"You've had your questions. Tell me why you attacked me the second you knew who I was."

" _What_ you are," Curaca corrected. "'Knuckles' is not a name. It's a description. Like 'guardian' it says something about you, but it's not a name."

She paused.

"You don't remember that either, do you?"

Knuckles was relieved enough by the change of topic to give this proper thought. It hadn't really been something that had bothered him very much before. For the longest time there'd been no one to call him anything at all. And of the first of those to actually be interested in what he called himself, Sonic and Tails weren't exactly shining examples – Tails never went by his given name and unless Sonic's parents had had extreme foresight, neither did the hedgehog.

"Do you know why you don't know?" Curaca asked.

Knuckles shook his head again, willing to follow this line of inquiry for as long as it led away from the matter of the Island and its Guardians – or lack thereof.

"That object you refer to as the _Master_ Emerald – the controller - you are what happens to people who live under its influence for too long. It eats away at them. Eats away their lives, their memories, their bodies and souls. It turns them slowly into monsters. Mindless creatures who will fight for it without even knowing why."

"No." Knuckles tugged fruitlessly to free himself from those still holding him. "That's not true. You're wrong!"

"Are we?" Curaca's voice was calm but implacable. "Then tell me why you fight for it?"

"I protect it," Knuckles said at once. "It's dangerous. People would misuse it."

"People," Curaca repeated. "But not you."

"No!"

" _He's_ dangerous!" Shaski cut across. "Look at him, he doesn't even see it!"

"Yes," Curaca agreed. "He is. Very dangerous. Yet he has not raised the emerald's power against us. Not in combat, and not now, as a prisoner. Why?"

This last she addressed to Knuckles.

"I don't want to fight you." Knuckles' facility with words had never been his strong point and balancing enough truthfulness to not antagonise them with enough lies to hide the Island's vulnerability was going to be almost impossible.

"I came here to find you," he tried. "I'd hoped..." But no. That's wouldn't do. He couldn't explain what he'd hoped without giving away the fact of the empty Island and undefended Emerald. He stopped and shook his head. Perhaps it would pass for confusion. He wouldn't even have to fake that.

Curaca frowned at his silence.

"And how many will come from the Floating Island to look for you once you are noticed missing?"

"No one." Knuckles met his eyes. That at least was safe to admit. "No one will come. No one knows I left."

"Then no one will know where you died!" snarled Shaski.

Curaca raised a hand. "A little patience before appointing yourself executioner, if you will, Shaski."

Shaski dipped his head briefly but didn't back down.

"What other end can there be for a guardian who would come here!"

Curaca ignored this and turned her attention back to Knuckles.

"So how does a guardian come to be absent from their duty with no one the wiser?"

Knuckles looked away, his creativity not up to further evasions.

"What does a guardian, derelict from his duty have to hide?"

A spark of anger flared and died and Knuckles shook his head. "I can't tell you that."

Curaca watched him, still calm, still coldly unrelenting.

"You mean you don't _want_ to. Although there will be things you truthfully cannot. Your true age. Perhaps your parents' names. The village where you were hatched-"

"Stop it!" Knuckles heaved against his captors then reeled, unsure if it was the muggy air, some other injury sustained or merely the verbal onslaught making his head spin.

"But some truths we must have," Curaca continued as though the interruption had not happened. "The safety of this community is my concern and I cannot permit information relevant to that concern to be withheld."

That probably qualified as the politest threat Knuckles had ever encountered not withstanding the fact that it clearly translated to, 'So answer the questions or we'll beat it out of you.'

Bur there was enough regret in Curaca's face to make Knuckles try one more thing.

"Curaca, this is the truth. What I have held back is not a threat to you and yours, but something I fear might threaten the things for which I am responsible. I swear no harm will come to this place from my being here."

There was a long, considered pause but Curaca shook her head slowly.

"It's not enough. Not from a guardian."

She turned away.

"Shaski. He has not told us the truth abut why he came or why he is so certain he won't be looked for. He is to tell us those two things and he is to survive the telling."

Shaski nodded. "I understand."

"Be sure you do. You are to make sure he is no threat to our life here but if he dies without trial, you will be held responsible as for the death of any other echidna."

Shaski's eyes narrowed. "He is not any other echidna."

"Yes, " Curaca's voice was calm. "He is. You know the histories as well as I do. Guardians were chosen as children, they were not volunteers, whatever they may have been taught to believe."

Shaski looked doubtful but sighed and nodded again. "As you say."

He beckoned the two echidnas holding Knuckles and led the way to beyond the edge of the loose grouping of shelters. Knuckles walked between the two echidnas holding him without struggling - he already know he couldn't free himself that way.. Half his attention was on them, in case they did loosen their grip or have a moment's inattention, the other half was on how to keep the Island's emptiness a secret. He knew himself to be an unconvincing liar. It was why he had been so careful to give Sonic no reason to ask questions, had made his preparations so slow and careful. That left not speaking at all if he wanted to keep the secret.

He knew he could survive a lot, resist a long time, use the Emerald to take the edge off pain, heal the worst injuries, even distract himself with it, slide his mind away to contemplate its depths, its links with the Island, himself, the chaos energies.

Or he could use it to fight. Physically stronger than him these other echidnas might be, but they wouldn't stand against him if he brought the full power of the Emerald to bear. But what then? A dozen or more had attacked him would he kill that many to escape, and further convince them of the evil of the Emerald and the Guardians? Give up any chance of ever knowing any more than he did right now about his own kind. Any chance of acceptance by them?

He let his mind run down another track. What if he did tell them? What would they do? What would he do if their next question was the Island's location? The Emerald's position? The safe route to it? Where would it stop?

Did he have to choose between these people and the Emerald? If he could manage to survive without speaking, the decision about what to do would be theirs instead of his.

They'd stopped, perhaps a fifty paces beyond the last of the shelters, beneath a large tree dominating a cluster of smaller new young trunks.

Shaski turned to face him, putting his spear on the ground and drawing a short, broad bladed knife from a sheath on his leg.

"Curaca talked about descriptions," he said, approaching to arm's length. "I am a hunter. Not a warrior, because we no longer have wars to fight. Not, in the normal way of things, a torturer. You could therefore make both of our lives a lot easier by telling me what we need to know, now."

Knuckles met his eyes as steadily as he could, then deliberately snorted. "I'm expected to believe that? You wanted me dead back there!"

"I think you ought to be killed out of hand," Shaski agreed readily. "It would be safer for everyone here. But that's not the same as wanting it to be drawn out. Tell me what we need to know. They'll try you, maybe they'll execute you, maybe not, but if they do it'll be quick and dignified." He shook his head. "This won't be."

Knuckles closed his eyes. Fight? Keep silent? Tell them? There was something about each he desired, something about each he feared.

Hopelessly caught in indecision, he tried again. "You _don't_ need to know. The Floating Island is no threat to you."

Shaski shook his head once more. "No one can say I didn't try."

As the words left his mouth, he took a half step forward and thrust the knife between Knuckles' lower two ribs and jammed it in to the hilt.


	5. 04 No Answers

Shaski jerked the knife up until it grated against bone and Knuckles felt his legs let go. He sagged, dangling between the two other hunters, his own weight against the broken shoulder almost as sharp as the knife. Shaski yanked the weapon free and there really was an unreasonable amount of blood and all three of them had obviously decided that whatever the penalty for murder it was worth it to have a clearly hated Guardian out of the way and he was going to die without even knowing why that was because he couldn't catch his breath and he couldn't work out if that was because the knife had caught a lung or just shock and Shaski was speaking but he couldn't quite make it out, ears ringing, head spinning, he couldn't focus. But there were words there and if he could at least make out _why_ this was happening...

"We know how to deal with guardians," Shaski was saying. "We know how hard you are to kill. The only one we've got a record of being killed by other echidnas was literally torn to pieces. Anything short of that, your damned controller will keep you alive."

And that much was true, Knuckles realised suddenly. The pain and blood loss were bad but they weren't getting worse. If he concentrated he could feel the Master Emerald at work on it, although he'd been too shocked to call consciously upon it. Ignoring Shaski for a moment, he reached out, tested the limits of it - split between the Island's needs and his own.

Shaski gestured at the wound. "That should keep your controller too busy for you to cause any trouble with it while we talk."

This was too close for comfort to the conclusion Knuckles had drawn for himself.

Shaski watched him for a moment.

"Your controller has given you weapons and means of escape which the rest of us do not have. It makes you dangerous even to try to talk to." He looked up from where Knuckles was slumped to the two echidnas acting as guards and spoke to them instead. "We'll tie him there."

Knuckles hadn't seen where he pointed but was carried bodily to a thick, heavy fallen log which lay across a shallow hollow. There was room for a rope to pass beneath and he was pushed to his knees beside it, his backpack of supplies pulled off and discarded to the side, and both wrists firmly bound to the broad trunk.

The three echidnas conferred for a moment, too quietly for him to hear, and then walked away. For a few minutes he was alone, struggling against the ropes until his vision greyed and a dull, aching resistance in his mind warned him he was in danger of asking more of the Master Emerald than it could deliver and still ward the Island.

He let his head lay forward on the rough bark between his bound hands and breathed heavily for a moment. He looked up at the sound of footsteps. The other two hunters had not returned but Shaski was back, with Curaca. The hunter carried a heavy blacksmith's pincers and Knuckles' mind skated away from considering why, refusing to dwell on it.

He dragged his concentration back to the tail end of the conversation between Curaca and Shaski.

"You don't have to witness..." Shaski was saying but Curaca cut him off.

"If a leader cannot stomach what they have ordered done then they are probably doing the WRONG thing."

Shaski made no response to this and Curaca spoke again, this time to Knuckles.

"We need to know how many guardians remain on the Floating Island and how you know none of them will come searching for you here. With that information I can keep the village safe and you will be given a fair trial."

Knuckles threw himself against the ropes, feet kicking in the leaf-mould on the ground for purchase, frustration for a moment overcoming the pain.

"I don't even know what I'm supposed to have done!"

Curaca's voice was unmoved. "That may be true. If so it will be taken in account."

Curaca dropped the pincers beside the log and bent to pull off Knuckles' gloves and boots. Compared to his existing state, that should have been nothing, meaningless, but the sense of increased vulnerability was out of all proportion. Knuckles cast about for any distraction. Gloves. Boots. Most of the echidnas here were dressed similarly to himself, though almost all wore at least a belt with a knife in addition, and several a second weapon too. A number had decorated spines. Could they glide with them as he did? They were all heavier set than him. Maybe not. Was he that different then? And _was_ it the Emerald that had done it? What had Shaski said about weapons? He'd never carried a weapon, never needed to. His own claws had served well enough. His eyes flew suddenly to Shaski's hands, one holding a knife again. Knife. No claws. And he knew what he'd meant about weapons and he knew what he intended with the pincers.

"Don't!" The word had flown from Knuckles' mouth before he realised he intended to speak it and instantly he wanted to snatch it back. Such a panicked shameful yelp.

"Don't," he repeated more deliberately. "You don't have to do this." But he had already tried that and had no idea how else to persuade them and only the Island's and Emerald's safety to trade for his own and he couldn't do it.

They must have realised it to because they didn't ask him again. Shaski probed with his knife the flesh at the base of the first claw on Knuckles' left hand, then took up the pincers and positioned them where claw and bone met. Knuckles found himself shaking, frantic, searching for words to deter either Shaski or Curaca but finding none.

The grip of the pincers was as long as Shaski's forearm, the leverage enormous.

Bone and claw splintered.

Knuckles shrieked, shameful or not it was out of his control and he _grabbed_ for the Master Emerald, casting his mind adrift into its power, keeping him alive, keeping the Island aloft. He saw his own blood still trickling into the peaty ground, the green glow of the Emerald's power flowing in his veins, striving to do the job instead. Shaski had moved onto his other hand and Knuckles saw the Island shudder and list as he failed to prevent himself tearing at the chaos energy, no more able to kept from clutching at it than he would from clutching at a rope were he drowning, desperate to be anywhere other than where he was, desperate for healing, succour, unconsciousness, anything.

Unconsciousness was what he got.

It was full daylight when his eyes flickered open, though it had been evening when he'd arrived at the village. He supposed it was even possible that more than one day had passed. He immediately turned his attention to the Emerald and the Island. Safe, calm, stable again for now. The Emerald was still expending an awful lot of energy on healing what should have been the mortal wound in his stomach, all else but survival put aside.

Letting go of his concentration on the Emerald was like falling, being dropped back into his battered body. He ached from head to toe quite apart from the individual injuries. His hands were caked in sticky, drying blood, all four claws torn away to the bone, and his scalp stung appallingly - handfuls of of red spines littering the ground before him gave the reason. Had they done that while he was unconscious? Or drifting, lost within the Emerald? The remaining spines, hanging half over his face were also sticky and heavy with blood and he didn't have the energy to flick them out of his eyes. His mouth was dry, and the well-advanced day was hot. His back hurt from too long slumped on his knees.

He could hear voices, at a distance. The normal routine of the village carrying on in spite of his presence. Was he being watched? How long did he have before they would come again? What would he tell them when they did?

Unable to answer any of these things, he closed his eyes against the daylight and sought unconsciousness once again.

* * *

A thousand miles away, Sonic was at full tilt, leaning into the curve of the trail at the edge of a broad lake when he heard his name being called. Looking up from his concentration on the trail, he clocked Tails flying across the lake, cutting the corner neatly to intersect Sonic's path, with a well practised eye for their relative speeds.

Sonic skidded to a stop as the fox touched down.

"What's up?" Something had to be or Tails would have waited for him to get back or joined him in a mock and impossible to win race or hauled out the Tornado to buzz him.

Tails brushed his cow-lick back off his face. "I'm not sure," he said. "Will you come and look?

Sonic shrugged. "Sure, but you realise if one of your gadgets has spat out a cog, you got the wrong hedgehog, right?"

Tails ignored the humour. He really was worried then. "It's not that. I think something might be wrong on the Floating Island."

Sonic frowned. "Bit of a wild hunch, Tails - we were there, what? A week ago?"

"It's not a hunch - I... Uh... Well, just come and look, will you?"

Sonic shrugged again, nodded and accelerated, keeping the speed down to a pace he knew Tails could match and making a beeline for the workshop.

The door stood open and Tails barely slowed down until he was inside. A machine Sonic couldn't remember seeing before - or at least not in its component parts all over the floor - occupied most of one wall. A mismatched assortment of screens displayed information he could no sense of whatsoever.

"Did your radar mate with half the Tornado's innards, Tails, 'cause I have no clue what you're showing me here."

Tails looked as much abashed as he did worried and spoke only hesitantly. "It, um. Well I _think_ it should be monitoring the Master Emerald."

Sonic spun to him. "What? How?"

Tails opened his mouth and Sonic headed him off. "Actually never mind the tech talk. Does Knuckles _know_ you've got this?"

Tails shook his head, wide eyed and Sonic whistled through his teeth.

"Oh man, he would do his _nut_!"

"I know I know." Tails said quickly. "I didn't plan it exactly, I just got experimenting, after Chaos, when everyone was focussed on tracking Emerald shards and chaos emeralds and then it was only when I wanted to check if it was doing what I thought it was, that I realised I should have told Knuckles. _Asked_ him, really."

"He'll see it as spying," Sonic predicted. "Insulting his ability to take care of the thing himself."

"It almost _is_ spying," Tails admitted. "We know Knuckles and the Master Emerald are linked - monitoring it _is_ a bit like monitoring him. That's why I came to get you. There's something different, something wrong. I think. The Emerald's power output fluctuates all the time. I think it's mostly to do with what the Island needs, changes in altitude, climate, atmosphere..."

Sonic gave his hand a 'hurry-it-up' twirl and Tails cut the explanation short.

"Since yesterday evening it's been flat out, a massive power draw."

Sonic looked at the screens, none the wiser as to which showed the effect Tails was describing.

"And you think it's because something's the matter with it?"

Tails nodded. "Or with the Island. Or with Knuckles."

Sonic considered this. "Alright. Let's at least try him on the radio. But if he's just doing weird Guardian stuff with his precious shiny rock and decides to come down here and wreck the joint because you peeked, don't blame me."

* * *

Knuckles wasn't sure whether or not he'd already been conscious when he felt the nudge in the ribs but it induced instant, instinctive panic that anyone could get so close without his awareness. He'd jerked violently against the ropes in reflex, nearly passed straight back out again and then contained himself, shuddering.

"What's this?" Shaski's voice.

Knuckles processed the question, his thoughts sluggish. Harmless. Safe. Not about the Island. He looked up to see what Shaski was holding.

"Radio," he croaked.

"Who's Sonic?"

Curaca's voice.

Baffling question.

"Sonic?"

"Someone called 'Sonic' has been calling on this radio, which was in your pack," Curaca elaborated. "Where are you, he wonders. Are you alright? Do you need help? Should he come up to the Island?" She waited for a response and, getting none, continued. " How does a guardian come to have friends on the surface?"

"He's not my.." Knuckles responded automatically, but broke off with a sigh. What did it matter? He'd only taken the radio so he could put Sonic off if he should call, delay him from coming looking while Knuckles chased rumours. What was he supposed to do with contact now? Scream for help? He'd never get more than two words out. And that was even assuming he wanted the complication of Sonic turning up here, which was something he was far from sure about. Some stubborn part of him insisted he ought to be able to make Curaca, Shaski and the other echidnas here understand. But one thing was certain, if Sonic got no answer he'd go looking for one. He'd search the Island for a start. And what had made him call?

Shaski's patience with his silence seemed exhausted.

"What happened to 'no one will come looking', guardian?" he asked, turning the title into a slur by his tone.

"I didn't think..." Knuckles ran out of breath or energy before he was halfway into the sentence. But he needed to explain himself, needed his wits about him. Reluctantly he reached again for the Master Emerald. Felt the reluctance mirrored there, felt the Island waver in its course as he drew more heavily on the power, quelling the pain and clearing his head, for now.

"I didn't think anyone _would_ come. I hid what I was doing, where I was going. I don't know why Sonic thinks anything is wrong. He's not from the Island, not a guardian, not even an echidna."

Shaski looked at Curaca.

"What will he do if he fails to contact you?"

Should he answer that, Knuckles wondered. It was still hard to think clearly It was hard to know what they would make of what information.

"Will he really go to the Floating Island as he said?" Curaca asked.

"Probably."

Shaski snarled. "You claim to not be a threat to us, that you won't be followed, and all the while your friend is busy turning out a search party! How did he know?"

"I don't know!" Knuckles had to resist the urge to yank at the ropes in sheer frustration. "I swear I have no idea! Let me talk to him. I'll tell him it's alright. Not to go to the Island. That whatever problem he thinks there is, that I'm dealing with it."

Curaca observed him thoughtfully. "Will he believe that?"

Knuckles bared his teeth. "Whether he does or doesn't, he damn well ought to know better than to come to the Island without my permission."

Curaca watched him a moment longer then turned to Shaski. "Give him the radio."

Shaski scowled but nodded.

Knuckles dropped it the first time, hands still sore and still bound at the wrists. He kept hold when Shaski handed it back to him and fumbled his thumb over the transmit button.

"Sonic. It's Knuckles."

There was a pause then the hedgehog's voice, loud and bright and eager and in such contrast to Knuckles' surroundings that it was almost disorienting.

"Knuckles! I've been calling all day. Where are you?"

"Where do you _think_ I am, hedgehog?" Knuckles snapped. Not a lie after all.

"Alright, alright, keep your spikes on. So nothing's up then?"

Knuckles had gasped, caught halfway between hysterical laughter and tears at the unintended vicious irony of the hedgehog-ish idiom and took a moment to catch his breath to answer.

"Knuckles?"

Knuckles collected himself. "Nothing is ' _up_ ', Sonic. If by ' _up_ ' you're asking if I want or need you careening around the Island interfering in what I am perfectly capable of dealing with myself."

There was a pause when there should have been a retort and Knuckles felt apprehension stir.

"Um. Knux... Listen, don't get mad but... Uh. Tails has built a sort of... thing. He reckons it can detect the Master Emerald and he was a bit worried that something was weird with it."

"Tails has _what_?" Forgetting himself again in his outrage, Knuckles made an abortive attempt to fight his way to his feet, causing Shaski to jab him with the butt end of the spear shaft. He fell back with a grunt.

"What was that?" Sonic asked. "Knuckles? What's going on up there?"

Knuckles gasped for breath. "Mind your own business, Sonic. Tell the cub to mind his. The Master Emerald is doing exactly what it's supposed to do. Stay off the Island. I am perfectly alright."

That was quite possibly, Knuckles reflected, the most barefaced lie he'd ever managed. He gave the radio as much of a throw as he could manage with tied hands so he wouldn't be tempted to add anything else.

Lying on the dirt, the radio still crackled.

"Knuckles. Knux. You still there? Come on. We were just worried that's all. Please - if there's something up - I mean something going on, you know we'd help right?"

Shaski picked up the radio and looked to Curaca.

"Destroy it," she said.

Shaski tore the powerpack off and Sonic's questioning voice was cut off mid word.

Curaca looked down at Knuckles.

"You stopped me calling him your friend yet he's ready to drop everything and rush to your help whether you want it or not. Do you really still claim the controller hasn't affected you? Hasn't eaten away great holes in your soul?"

Knuckles released the grip he'd taken of the chaos energies in order to speak almost normally with Sonic and the fatigue and pain rushed back like an incoming tide. He closed his eyes, too exhausted to muster an answer.

* * *

Tails and Sonic stared at the silent radio.

"Do you believe him?" Tails eventually asked, when it was obvious no further reply would be forthcoming.

Sonic shook his head.

"Not even a little bit. He's in trouble."


	6. 05 Lost

Tails touched the Tornado down on the packed hardpan at the edge of Sandopolis, the flat, barren fringe before it turned to true desert on one side and the rocky sides of the volcano of Lava Reef at the other. He spun the aircraft on the spot so as to peg the tail down into the wind. It was a bad place for the aircraft what with turbulent thermals, dust, grit and the ceaseless wind but it was the closest ground to Hidden Palace which was flat enough for a landing. And if Knuckles _was_ in some sort of trouble, Hidden Palace was the most likely refuge for both him and the Emerald.

Sonic jumped down to help with securing the aircraft then gestured around at those ruins visible from their landing spot.

"Something's definitely up. Some of that damage is new."

As they left the aircraft and passed closer to the columns, Tails had to agree. Several listed, badly - the churned sand showing the disturbance to be recent. Others had tumbled but the broken edges were sharp and new, not yet weathered.

"An earthquake?" Tails asked.

"When not even on the earth?" Sonic said. "Island quake."

They looked at each other, both knowing that the last time the Island had shaken and trembled the cause had been the loss of the Master Emerald from its place.

"We need to get inside." Sonic was already running for the cave system. He skidded to a stop just inside.

"Woah!"

Tails stopped beside him. The tunnel was pitch black, lacking its normal greenblue glow.

"What's happened to the light?" Sonic asked.

"I don't know." Tails reached out to touch the slick stone. "I never knew what caused it in the first place. I thought it was something on the walls. Algae or something."

They both stood, staring uneasily for a moment.

"There's torches in the Tornado," Tails said and Sonic dashed back to grab them.

They went cautiously, even in the torchbeams - the tunnel twisted sharply to the left only paces from the entrance and all daylight was lost. Underfoot the going changed from rock to wood and then, without warning vanished altogether. Sonic gave a startled yelp and flung up his arms, long practise made almost instinct, and which paid off. Tails had dropped his torch instantly and grabbed for Sonic, simultaneously lashing his tails into a spin to catch them both.

Sonic had somehow kept hold of his own torch but there was suddenly a new light in any case as the collapse of the bridge seemed to have triggered a general disintegration of the path ahead. Stone and wooden bridges alike collapsed and crumbled as a river of magma became visible below.

"Oh good," gasped Sonic. "At least we'll be able to light our way by the boiling lava!"

Tails saved his breath for flying. The tunnel darkened again up ahead and his only thought was to reach it and hope it was solid ground before he tired.

It was close, but eventually they both stood looking back at the lava flow. Tails was panting.

"I don't think I can make it back that way, Sonic."

Sonic put his hand on the fox's shoulder. "No, I think we'll pick another way out!" He frowned. "Do you think that bridge was weakened by the same quake that damaged the pillars outside?"

Tails thought a moment, then shook his head. "No. I think it was a new trap."

"Hmm. Me too. I hate to be the one to say it, but I think we need to go carefully."

* * *

It was sunset on the second day since Knuckles had come to the village. Or maybe it was the third. The periods of unconsciousness made it hard to tell and the way he'd clutched with such indiscipline at the Emerald's power meant he couldn't use the progress of his healing injuries as a measure either.

Nor was the passing time the only source of confusion. It was growing increasingly hard to distinguish between Shaski's constant questioning about the Island and Curaca's apparently mild, though inexplicable, curiosity about Sonic. Harmless in itself, since she surely couldn't know how many traps it contained but dangerous too.

How had they met? Safe to answer. A humiliating mistake but safe to answer. Just a mistake.

Why had no one else realised the truth, that Sonic wasn't the real threat? Impossible to answer without revealing that there only HAD been Knuckles himself to make the decision. The only remaining Guardian on an empty Island.

It was exhausting, scanning each answer before it left his mouth, looking for the traps. Trying to do it fast enough to avoid Shaski's flashing spear blade, which bit into his side, or limbs, or back, every time he hesitated too long.

But the shadows were lengthening and they surely wouldn't keep it up into the night. Would they?

As if in answer to his unspoken plea the two echidnas questioning him withdrew out of earshot for several minutes. Curaca returned first.

"As a guardian you ought to know better than any of us where the limits of the controller's power are. It's only ignorant outsiders who believe fairy stories about its power being infinite. You can't believe that you can keep the truth from us indefinitely."

 _Did_ he think that? Knuckles examined his own thoughts as best he could. Did Curaca think he was holding out because he believed help would come? He knew no help was coming. He knew exactly how difficult he'd tried to make it for anyone to follow him. Did he still think he could escape? It was taking every bit of willpower he had just to use the Master Emerald to stay alive. Was he suffering for no better reason than he hadn't decided what to do?

Curaca stepped back without further comment. Shaski moved in instead. The two hunters who helped tie him in the first place were there again too. When had that happened? Had he drifted off again?

Their knives were out and they were at his hands and Knuckles was already half way to crying out before he even knew what they intended but they had only cut the ropes. They hauled him to his feet and then almost off them when he found he couldn't easily straighten his back to stand after too long spent doubled over on his knees. They pulled his hands behind his back and retied them with the tail end of a long rope which one of them neatly and accurately cast over a branch well above. This time Knuckles guessed correctly what they intended and was already screaming before they heaved.

* * *

The new traps had driven Sonic and Tails well off their planned course through the caves and the stop-start pace was not one either of them were used to, with the result that they'd paused momentarily to catch their breath in the stifling air. Sonic declared the stop for Tails' benefit but really he was more than a bit impressed with the fox's stamina these days. How long had it been since they'd first tried to find their way through these tunnels? Worried not about what might have happened to Knuckles but instead what he might have been about to do to _them_? Three years? Four? It couldn't be more but it seemed it. They'd all grown so much more than just in height since then.

"We've been here before," Tails said suddenly.

Sonic groaned. "I don't want to hear that we're going in circles, Tails. Tell me we're not going in circles."

"No, not that." Tails said. "I mean a long time ago, the first time." He pointed. "Look."

In the torchbeam a dull gleam of rusty metal glimmered. A destroyed bot. Sonic poked it with a toe.

"You're right, that's years old. It's odd, I was just thinking abut the first time we were here."

Tails shrugged. "Not odd. Guess you recognised it too, just didn't know you did."

Sonic grinned. "Well at least we know this way."

"It might have new traps too,"Tails warned.

Sonic grinned. "Well maybe I have some new ideas for getting round them too!"

Tails rolled his eyes and shrugged. "Ready when you are."

This tunnel seemed to have suffered more from the effects of the quakes that had damaged the ruins than from new traps and Sonic had to spindash their way through a number of rockfalls before they found themselves leaving the heat of the lava caves for the cooler air of the tunnels below Hidden Palace.

Oddly tranquil, the long flight of stairs was still clear of pitfalls or attacks, something Sonic had always found strange. Perhaps the original builders, and now Knuckles simply assumed that they could deal personally with anyone making it this far.

Today though it was silent and like the rest of the place, extremely dark, though perhaps a tiny bit lighter

Tails broke the quiet.

"If he was okay he'd have found us already wouldn't he?"

Sonic made a face.

"Usually."

He gave Tails' shoulder a squeeze. "We'll find him."

Even Sonic's heart sank though when they finally entered the Emerald Chamber itself.

There had been damage here too, though mainly limited to falling plaster and stone dust. A think layer of the stuff coated everything, even the Master Emerald, which was askew on its base. It still glowed, though dimly, in the darkened chamber.

"He's not here." Sonic said it first,

It was impossible to believe that Knuckles' first act after any upset to the Island's stability would not have been to come here, to check on the Emerald but the dust on the floor was undisturbed by any footprint other than their own.

He was not here and somehow the reason for his absence had to be connected to the darkness and the weak, pale lacklustre light of the Master Emerald.

For a horrible moment Sonic wondered if Knuckles might actually be dead. He'd obviously been hiding something during their brief radio exchange but could things have escalated so quickly? Did he even know Knuckles had been alone for that conversation - had he been nagging at him while Knuckles was sat, locked up somewhere with a gun to his head?

Sonic pushed the notion firmly out of his mind. Briskly made plans instead.

"We have to search the rest of the Island," he said. "And check out Robotnik's base."

It didn't look like there had been bots here - the damage looked like a disruption to the Island itself, not an attack, and that being the case, it was hard to think of anything that would account for Knuckles, though not the Emerald being missing, but of course Robotnik's interference was always the default suspicion. They had to rule it out.

"We'll get the Chaotix crew looking too." Sonic hesitated. "No, we'll get them up here - someone has to make sure the Master Emerald stays safe while we work out what's going on. We'll get everyone else we can trust in the other zones looking. But quietly. The last thing we want to do is advertise the fact that the Master Emerald is short one Guardian!"

* * *

Even if one shoulder hadn't already been broken, the contorted position would have been unbearable. Knuckles dangled at least his own height off the ground, hands drawn up behind him. He was no longer screaming. It was all he could do to draw breath and distantly he wondered what use questioning him could be when he couldn't manage to speak even if he wanted to answer.

The daylight was almost gone and Knuckles was increasingly tormented by the fear, crawling towards terror, that his questioners would leave when full night came, would leave him like this.

Shaski had his foot on the taut rope, where it was tied off at the root of the next tree. Abruptly, he trod down heavily and Knuckles was hoisted higher in the air.

"How many guardians on the Floating Island?" Shaski asked.

Knuckles shook his head once, reflexively, automatic denial all he could muster.

Shaski removed his foot from the rope and Knuckles dropped, jerking to a stop as the rope snapped taut once again.

And he discovered he could still scream after all.

Shaski put his foot on the rope again and he discovered he could also speak.

"No..." It was a whimper, as shameful and as involuntary as the screams and Knuckles loathed himself for it.

Curaca raised her hand to intervene and Shaski stood back. Knuckles was shaking and although it aggravated the pain he couldn't make himself stop. Curaca stood below him.

"Your loyalty and endurance would be laudable in the cause of family or tribe," she said. "But how can you feel any loyalty to a _thing_ which demands you suffer like this to keep it safe?"

It was hard to concentrate on her words, still more difficult to make sense of them, but she was continuing anyway.

"Why is it you believe we want the information? To attack? To take the controller for ourselves? To turn ourselves into creatures like you? No." She paused, making sure she had his wavering attention. "We want to keep as far _away_ from it as mortally possible, guardian. It is an abomination that should never have been created. And only another abomination would want to steal it."

Knuckles fought to understand. Did he believe that? Had they told him that at the beginning? Why not? Would he have believed them? Did it make a difference if he did?

For some reason Sonic's voice echoed in his mind.

We've been through all this and you still think I want to steal your damn rock!

When had that been? They'd been bloodied, both of them injured, tired. They'd fallen. Was it the second Death Egg or another occasion? Long enough after he'd met Sonic that there was hurt as well as anger in the hedgehog's voice at the mistrust. They'd fallen, landed wounded and exhausted on the grass of the Island, the Emerald they'd recovered together rolling over on the ground. Sonic by chance had landed closer to it and reached to steady it and Knuckles had leapt instinctively towards him, unthinkingly, knocking his hand away, putting himself between the hedgehog and the Master. Sonic had just stared at him.

 _Been through all this_

Everything hurt, and he couldn't think straight and he was so tired, so past the end of endurance and for what?

 _You still think I want to steal_

Nobody ever came who didn't want it, of course he'd suspected Sonic, of course he tried to keep it from these people, no one could be trusted with it. He knew it in his bones.

 _Damn rock_

And why did he know it? Was Curaca right, was it only because that's what the Emerald itself made him believe?

"I will keep this village safe, guardian, whatever it takes. Now tell me about the guardians on the Floating Island."

Knuckles struggled with himself, no longer sure he could bear any more - CERTAIN he couldn't for the sake of something he was no longer sure ABOUT. From the corner of his eye he glimpsed Shaski moving back towards him and that was enough.

"No one!" he choked out. "No one will come-"

Shaski cut him off with an exasperated snarl. "We've heard this already."

Knuckles almost panicked then. To tell the truth and not be believed? They truly would drive him out of his wits if they kept asking now.

"No one! No one will come because no one is left!" Both listening echidnas had frozen at these words but Knuckles barely noticed, spitting out the words in a flurry of pain and anger and near delirious exhaustion. "They are _all gone_. There is _no one_ left. Damn you and them both! They're gone. There's just me. Me, an island full of ruins and the Master Emerald. And no idea why! Is that what you want to hear?"

Curaca stood frozen a moment longer then turned to Shaski.

"Let him down."


	7. 06 To Judge

Curaca looked from Shaski to Olec, who she had called to her chambers at the centre of the tunnel complex. Outside, the sounds of the village preparing for the night went on.

"Is he secure?" she asked.

Shaski nodded. "An empty storeroom, there's no way out. I left two guards. And he's still too injured to use the controller for more than survival. It's not just the injuries. He's asking for water, he's had nothing since he came here. If he's going to be executed, then for the sake of decency it should be sooner rather than later."

Curaca nodded. "I know. That's what we're here to decide. The first question is whether we believe his claim that the Floating Island is abandoned - that _this_ guardian is the only one left."

"Yes," Shaski said at once. "He could have lied at any point to spare himself and didn't. It was the truth."

"I agree," Curaca nodded. "He was too obviously distraught at being made to tell it for it to be anything other than truth. So the decision before us is what we do with both that information and the remaining guardian."

"He has to be killed." Again, Shaski's answer came instantly. "The only possible reason for not doing so at once was the risk of revenge from other guardians who might have come looking for him. Now we know they won't."

"It is the least risky course," Curaca agreed. "But I would raise two points against it. One of morals and one of our own self interest." She moved to the corner of the room and lit extra candles, to be able to see the faces of her two advisors more clearly. To know their reactions.

"This guardian says he does not know why he is the last. Says he doesn't know why we attacked him for the fact of his guardianship. To know nothing of us. If that is also the truth then we would be executing him for crimes he doesn't even remember."

Shaski was shaking his head, "That only matters if this is about punishment - it's not - it's about the controller and the servers and the danger of that power in anyone's hands. They're dangerous and anyone who uses them is dangerous."

Curaca waited for Shaski to finish and continued without comment. "The other reason I hesitate is that I have a question. Perhaps Olec can answer it. Perhaps there's something in the records that would tell us."

She paused, knowing this must be taken seriously and that Shaski was finding it hard to see past the immediate present danger of a guardian in their midst.

"The question is this. What will the controller do if we kill its guardian? Will it choose another? And if there are truly no more echidnas in proximity to it on the Floating Island, will it choose one of us instead?"

This time Shaski's response was a shocked silence.

Olec spoke for the first time in the conversation, his voice slow and thoughtful.

"It is a possibility. There are certainly echidnas here who are more sensitive than others to the chaos energies. In the times when there was still contact between the surface and the Floating Island the guardians picked and chose among them."

"Stealers of children," Shaski spat.

"Over time, with breeding, one assumes that their population became more and more comprised of those who were highly chaos-sensitive while ours on the surface became less so. But it still manifests. Some of those it manifests in become seers - the energies flow in time as well as physical space and can sometimes be traced. Others find it unpleasant - I believe your own daughter suffers from time to time, Shaski."

Shaski snarled. "Watch your words, seer! My daughter would never be a stinking guardian!"

Olec's mild tone didn't change. "We have no way of knowing _who_ might be if you kill the existing one."

Curaca raised her hand. "Alright. Olec, do you have any other information? I would hear your opinion on the correct course."

Olec was silent for long moments.

"I cannot see his end. Only mist, emerald green. The controller obscures all. Danger on both paths. Dissent. I cannot say."

Curaca nodded. "Does anyone have anything else to say before we decide?"

"If we don't execute him, what DO we do?" asked Shaski. "You can't seriously intend to let him go?"

"No. We would have to deal with him here."

" _How_?" Shaski demanded? "How exactly do you propose we keep him from killing us to escape the moment he's able? Or are you proposing we keep him tied to a tree for the rest of his life, stabbing him every time the controller gets out of line?"

Curaca gave him a quelling stare and Shaski lowered his gaze mutinously as she continued.

"If we believe him when he says the Floating Island is empty, and we believe him when he says he remembers nothing of why, or of the other guardians, then have we reason to mistrust his first claim to us that he had come here merely to find out of there were other echidnas on the surface? If he could be made to understand..."

Shaski snarled, interrupting. "Hear me well, Curaca. I did not shame myself by striking and wounding a bound prisoner just so that you could turn him lose to endanger us all."

Curaca sighed. "I do hear you well, Shaski. I disagree, but I understand. Do you have any other points to raise?"

Shaski shook his head.

"Olec?"

Another headshake.

"Then the question before us is whether or not we execute the guardian. I say no."

"I say yes." Shaski scowled. "It's risky either way but leaving him alive is a more certain risk, the rest is guessing."

Curaca acknowledge this with a nod. "Olec?"

"I cannot say. There is only dissent."

Curaca sighed again. "Olec abstains from the vote. There is no consensus. We will speak to him then in the morning, after sleep, with clear heads, and if we still cannot reach agreement, he will be tried by the village then and we three will not interfere."

* * *

Sonic and Tails had searched the tunnels the rest of the night and the surface of the island the following day, even splitting up to cover the ground more quickly - something else Sonic wouldn't have even contemplated in the past. They were both bleary eyed and staggering tired by the time the Chaotix arrived mob-handed the following sunset.

"We'd have been here sooner - Amy said she'd been trying to get hold of us all day," Vector explained. "We were dealing with a bit of local bother."

He didn't elaborate and Sonic didn't have the time or inclination to find out more.

"You've searched the Island, he's definitely not here?" Espio asked.

"Not here," Sonic confirmed. "But no sign of a fight either. It's weird." He frowned. "Now I'm not even sure he was here when I spoke to him."

"Why would he lie?" Mighty asked. "Not really his style."

Sonic snorted. "No. But, secretive, uncommunicative stubbornness? Utterly his style. Just keep the Emerald safe. If you can, see if you can find any clue here what happened. Oh, and I need Charmy as a messenger - don't want to put too much on radio comms."

"Right," Vector said at once. "Let's avoid declaring open season on chaos emeralds as long as possible!"

"Tails, we'll go back to Emerald Hill first and find out what Amy-" Sonic broke off belated realising that Tails, was in fact asleep where he was, curled up on the floor.

"He's got a point, Sonic," Mighty shrugged. "You look done in."

"We searched all last night," Sonic admitted. "You'll need to be careful y'know - there's a lot of new traps."

"No problem." Vector and several of the others grinned. "We like a challenge. Just tell us where you want Charmy then get some sleep and we'll head inside. Good luck."

Sonic made a face. "You too - I mean it about the new defenses - you might need it."

He looked once morning at Tails, sound asleep, deeply reluctant to delay the search another night, but there were only so many hours in a day.

* * *

The storeroom had been hollowed out of solid rock, dry and warm and smelled faintly of old vegetables. Knuckles lay on the floor, curled on his side, bound at wrists and ankles. The thirst was as bad as the pain now. Even the Master Emerald couldn't keep him alive in the face of it for more than a day or two more.

He'd spent the night hovering between sleep and unconsciousness, between troubled dreams and wakefulness, drifting along the boundary between dreams and delirium.

 _Your damn rock_

 _You still think I want to steal your damn rock._

Sonic wavered before his eyes, glaring at him in disgust before stabbing him between the ribs.

 _Damned guardian and your damned rock._

"Sonic..."

Curaca paced before him shaking her head but it was Shaski's sneer that came from her lips.

 _He's not your friend. You say he's not your friend._

Sonic reached for the Master Emerald, raised Shaski's spear to strike it, and Knuckles watched himself leap for him, ramming his claws up into the hedgehog's ribs. Blood and chaos energy spilled over his hands in equal measure. His own blood ran into the ground, glowing emerald green.

 _All this_

 _Damn rock_

"Sonic!"

There was movement out of sight.

"Wake up, guardian. You dream too loudly."

Sonic was gone and the blood was all his own and a bent-backed grey-furred echidna was standing over him. Shaski and Curaca flanking him.

"What do you _want_ , guardian?" the old echidna asked. "If you are not killed here what is is that you would want to happen next?"

Knuckles tried to work enough moisture into his mouth to answer, while he thought about it, his eyes drawn involuntarily to Shaski's blade where he stood watching.

What did he want? Right now?

He wanted to be back on the Floating Island. Wanted to lie on the cool, luminescent marble of the Hidden Palace steps, in the light of the Master Emerald and sleep until nothing hurt any more.

And then what?

Live out the rest of his life, there, alone, the last, and still, _still_ , not knowing why? Knowing that the only kin he knew of for certain, despised him.

"I want-" Trying to talk brought on a round of painful coughing and he had to stop for breath before starting again, speech coming in breathless gasps. "I came here. Because I wanted to know. Who I am. Who my people... were... Why I was left as Guardian. I still want to know. But you don't know either. Do you? Why the Island is empty?"

Knuckles closed his eyes, touched the Emerald, found the strength to keep speaking.

"I won't beg for my life." He turned his head to meet Curaca's eyes from where he still lay.

"I know why you think I'm dangerous. And you're right. The Master Emerald is too dangerous for anyone to use safely. I've seen it used as an energy source for vile and lethal weapons. I've seen it drive people out of their senses with fury and hate and raw power. I've seen it raise monsters. Twist the past and the future."

He was talking too fast now, breathless, headlong, all caution, all reticence lost because what good had it done him?

"Even using it now just to stay awake enough to tell you these things I can feel it calling, tugging. I could do more than this, I could take it all, heal every injury, smash this place open to the sky and fly a hundred miles from here in moments. If I didn't care that doing so would bring the Island crashing down, that it would rip apart everyone here, that it would turn me into a mindless vengeful creature who would never ever stop."

He watched his words crash up against three shocked, horrified expressions but ploughed on.

"You think you stopped me using it that way by injuring me. You didn't. *I* stopped. I let go. How much power do you think it takes to keep an entire Island floating in the sky? If I let it fall instead, I could do _anything_ with that power."

With a violent effort he squirmed his way back to his knees, causing Shaski to level his spear, Curaca to flinch but hold her ground. "Anything," Knuckles repeated.

"And I will not."

He gave his head a tiny shake, ignoring the dizziness even that much movement caused. "The Island might be empty, I might be its last guardian but I _am_ still Guardian and I will not let it fall and I will not destroy the only other echidnas I've met."

"You think I'm already a monster and I know exactly why, because I'm afraid of becoming one every single time I use the Emerald. So if you've decided that it's safer to kill me then I can think of absolutely nothing to say that could dissuade you."

He let go, slumping back against the wall.

There was silence.

The grey furred echidna broke it. "And what of the controller if you _are_ killed?"

The irony was too much. _Now_ they were worried about that? Something between a snort and a sob escaped Knuckles and he gave a hint of a shrug, feeling his eyes slipping closed again. "There'll be an almighty free-for-all I should think."

"I mean what of the controller itself? Would it choose another guardian?"

Knuckles struggled to make sense of the question. There were no more guardians. He was the the last. The last...guardian... Realisation hit him. The last guardian, not the last echidna. If he was killed would another echidna find themselves in his place?

His eyes flew back open, the shock of the thought enough to rouse him.

"I don't know." He looked from one face to the next. The fear he'd felt when he thought they might not believe him at the tree seemed to have settled on him and worked its way inside, any question making his stomach writhe as he answered. "I don't even know how _I_ ended up Guardian. You think it might?"

"We don't know." Curaca admitted. "We know the guardians exposed potential candidates to the controller at a young age, that there was a selection process, but we've no way of guessing what would happen in the absence of that."

"It's dangerous" Knuckles said at once though no question had been asked. "I don't know if I was _given_ control or learned it. If I learned it..."

"...Whoever was chosen wouldn't have it," Curaca reached the same conclusion. "We are at an impasse, guardian. Clearly you understand why we cannot release you. And yet we know, perhaps better than you do, that your life was not of your own making. And now it seems there are dangers in killing you too."

She turned to Shaski and Olec. "Do you have anything else to ask before we review our decision?"

Silence. Acknowledged with a nod.

Knuckles expected them to leave then, to decide what to do to him somewhere off alone but no one moved.

"Have either of you changed your opinion?" Curaca asked.

Olec shook his head. "I have no decision. There is only chaos."

"Shaski?"

Silence.

"Shaski?" Curaca repeated.

"I was sure." Shaski said slowly. "Almost sure enough to kill himself myself, with or without approval. Sure enough to maim. Sure enough to have to visit the stream to wash away his blood before going home to my daughters. Sure I was doing it to keep us all safe from him, when if what he says is true I never could. And now... I am not sure."

Knuckles was rapidly losing his grip on consciousness again but took in enough of this to stare at Shaski, trying to make sense of it. Shaski stared back, frowning, as Knuckles lost the battle to keep his eyes open.


	8. 07 Trial

Sonic landed hard on his tail and cursed himself for agreeing to split up. His reluctance had been for Tails' sake even after they'd managed fine on the Island, but now it was him who could have done with the airborne help. He was stuck at the bottom of a vertical sided shaft, lethal metal spikes whisking in and out of the walls above him.

Even in his frustration it occurred to him to wonder at the defence. Seriously - didn't Robotnik ever worry about stumbling into all this junk himself? He had seemed genuinely startled at their appearance this time so what was it all for? Gloomily Sonic wondered if his surprise was an indication that Knuckles was indeed not here, surely Robotnik would have expected a rescue attempt if he really had been holding him. It would mean all this was for nothing but at the same time maybe that was good. It was almost impossible after all, to be sure they'd really searched everywhere. This place was a maze. He already knew he'd be left worrying that maybe Knuckles had been somewhere here they hadn't found.

First though he had to get out himself. He thought of calling Tails, they both still had their radios but he wasn't certain he'd be able to give accurate directions. He watched the spikes. Perhaps he could use them, if he jumped at the just right moment he could perhaps kick off on one of them and boost himself up to the top. Or get skewered if he missed of course!

His first attempt resulted in another fall, sneakers skidding off the slick metal, but it convinced him the principle was sound and a few attempts later he made it. Tails would be at the rendezvous by now, perhaps he'd had more luck.

One look was enough that Sonic knew he hadn't but they were airborne in the Tornado and heading away before Tails elaborated.

"I got into the computer, nothing there, no prisoner info, no projects remotely related to anything I could guess might be to do with the Island or the Emeralds. I even opened all the electronic locks on all the doors in the place just in case."

Sonic nodded, slightly reassured that Tails also thought it fairly clear that Knuckles hadn't been there.

"What next?" Tails asked.

* * *

"Stand up," Shaski ordered.

Knuckles wasn't sure he could, even though someone had cut the ropes at his ankles, but he'd surrendered enough pride already and if this was his execution he wasn't prepared to be dragged there like some low-animal to slaughter. He rolled slowly to his knees, pushed himself up with his bound hands and staggered, reeling several steps across the cell before coming to an unsteady standstill, splayfooted and panting.

"Walk."

No one touched him. No one hurried him. When he fell, Shaski and the other guards simply waited for him to struggle back to his feet. When there was a turning Shaski indicated a direction. None of them lowered their spears at any point. Knuckles wondered what they'd do if he finally found himself unable to regain his feet.

The tunnel they were in lightened gradually and he realised they were approaching the surface. The same something inside that had flinched last night even at harmless questions now shivered at the daylight. Were they taking him back to the tree? _Coward_ , he told himself but couldn't even muster any real heat to the thought. What they'd done to him was beyond his control, what they were going to do next was beyond his control. He wasn't what he'd though himself to be. Not as good, not as strong.

He fell again. Pushed himself back to his feet again.

But he wasn't what they thought him either. He wasn't a monster. Wasn't a killer of his own kind. And if it took his own death to prove that, then that was out of his control too.

The Master Emerald yammering in his mind with the pain of his injuries, cried to be used, cried for escape but it was easier to ignore today. Distance perhaps or only his own growing weakness. A strange sort of fatalism had taken hold of him. Nothing seemed to matter very much. If the only proof of his truthfulness that they'd accept was his death well then he'd die. He'd always known that guarding the Emerald was likely to be the death of him sooner or later, what did it matter really that this was sooner?

He wished he could tell Sonic not to waste time or risk himself searching. Wished he could tell him he was sorry for distrusting him so many times. Explain what he'd learned, excuse the flaw in his own character as the Emerald's influence and admit aloud to the unguardianlike friendship which the hedgehog seemed to take entirely for granted.

They were outside now and there was a crowd. Knuckles hesitated and even that much break in his momentum sent him stumbling again. He was uncomfortable in crowds. Utterly unused to them. And this one was tense, a constant murmur of anxious voices as he approached. He watched his feet instead of the people, concentrating on staying upright.

"Stop."

Knuckles looked up as he obeyed. They were standing in one of the open sided shelters, Curaca and Olec were there. Shaski left him standing between the two guards and joined them, facing the villagers who were grouped in a broad semi circle around the shelter.

Curaca spoke, her voice carrying in a ringing tone as the crowd fell silent.

"These are the facts we know. This guardian is the last of those who once held sway over the controller on the Floating Island."

Shocked whispers fluttered across the clearing. Knuckles fought back a feeling like panic at so many people knowing of the Island's vulnerability, the Emerald's unguarded state. Out of his control and yet still his fault.

"He says he does not remember them. That he knows nothing of what they have done. That he came here only because he had thought himself the only echidna left and had hoped to discover others." She indicated herself, Olec and Shaski. "We three are agreed that he speaks the truth in these things."

She didn't wait for the whispers to subside this time.

"He says he could have used the controller's power against us and has not and will not, even to the saving of his own life. Again we are agreed that he _believes_ this to be true. We do not know how much the controller can, however, influence his will."

A pause as the crowd took this in.

"If he is killed we are agreed there is a risk that another guardian will be chosen from among the surviving echidnas. From among us."

Curaca looked long at the villagers. "The balance between these two risks then is such that we have not been able to reach a decision among us on whether or not he should be executed. It is therefore the choice of the village. Your choice." She glanced at Knuckles. "He is already dying. Without water he will not survive two days. If no one can bring themselves to spare him or if anyone is convinced enough to kill him outright then the decision will be made and we will deal with the consequences. If he is allowed to live them he must be kept here in the village, far from the controller's influence to serve the village and be taught what he has forgotten."

Knuckles looked across at Curaca, startled. They'd tell him what he wanted to know? All the missing information he didn't have about who the guardians had been? He stopped himself abruptly. Of course not. Because he wouldn't survive. No one here would let him survive, he'd seen enough of what they thought of him and his kind here. Whatever pretty words they put around it this was an execution.

He let himself be led by the guards to the upright of the shelter where they bound him to the post. It caught the shade at the moment but wouldn't later in the day. Perhaps that wouldn't matter. He watched people filtering out of the clearing, waiting for someone to attack. There were plenty of angry looks but no one seemed in a hurry to do the job. Perhaps they preferred to let quiet, bloodless thirst do it for them. Two or three people openly discussed it, staring at him.

"If they couldn't make up their minds how in the name of stinking chaos are we supposed to?"

"He doesn't look that dangerous."

Someone snorted loudly. "Apart from the fact he should be dead already. Look at the state of him, that _thing_ is keeping him alive."

Knuckles closed his eyes, willing the sun down, willing the day away, willing it over one way or another.

* * *

Amy jumped to her feet as Sonic and Tails came back in but slumped back into her chair as she saw the looks on their faces.

"Nothing?"

They shook their heads.

She sighed and gestured to the papers and notes all over the table, half covering the computer keyboard. "I've started sending out info to people we can trust to look. Been going through old contacts. I haven't told everyone the truth. If people don't know Knuckles by sight I've just sent a picture and not said anything about the Island or Emerald."

She leaned back, stretched and sighed again. "It's hard to run a missing person hunt when you're trying to keep it a secret that the person is missing."

Sonic picked up the printout of the cropped and enlarged photo Amy had pointed to.

"It'll get out sooner or later." He looked down at the picture as he spoke. Knuckles was turning away from the camera, a startled, almost angry look on his face. "Robotnik must already be wondering why we made a run on the base out of the blue." Sonic frowned and looked back at Amy. "Is this the best picture you could find?"

Amy nodded, rummaging through the papers to hand him the original. Sonic was laughing in the shot, tugging on Knuckles' arm, trying to turn him back towards the photographer.

"I took that," Tails said. "That's why it's blurred, I was laughing too. I don't think Knuckles had ever had his photo taken in his life!"

Amy smiled a brief vanishing flicker. "I don't suppose he had. Nor planned to again by the look of it. There were hundreds of you and Sonic. But even from the ones taken on the Island I couldn't find a clearer one of Knuckles."

Sonic dropped the photos back on the table. "You can see it's him. It'll have to do. I'll take copies and search outwards from where the Island is. It can't have moved that fast, and if he's on foot nor can he."

Amy pulled a map from the bottom of the pilot of clutter. "Mark on here where you've tried then."

Sonic nodded and took the map as well.

"I want to try something in the workshop," Tails said. "If the energy changes from the Master Emerald show up then maybe deliberate use does and maybe there's a way to get a location or a direction or something."

"Anyway of narrowing it down would help, Tails." Amy said.

They both left and she sat alone at the table again. If only they had more information. She tried listing what they knew.

No sign of attack on the Island but would a hand to hand fight leave evidence? Probably not. But the only reason she could think of for anyone attacking was the Master Emerald and that was undisturbed, the traps unsprung, until Sonic and Tails had arrived. Had the victor of this hypothetical fight gotten cold feet at the prospect when they realised there was more to the Island defences than Knuckles himself? If Knuckles had lost then he was either dead, a prisoner or unable to get back for some reason. In which case all they could do was what there were doing and search. They'd run through that option already.

So what else was there? Was there anything that would make Knuckles leave deliberately? When had he ever left before? Only in search of the Emerald or Emerald shards and the Emerald was safe so not that. What else? To help _them_ , when push really came to shove and they'd asked he'd come. But Robotnik had been quiet and they'd had no contact so not that either.

What else was there? _Sonic's_ decision making was unpredictable. Knuckles' generally wasn't. He'd always come down on the side of the Emerald, the Island and, albeit protestingly, his friends. He was predictable enough that it had already been exploited on more than one occasion. What else was there he cared about, what could top all three and make him leave? What else could sway his decision making up there alone?

Alone. The word caught Amy's attention. That was what else - the only other thing Knuckles showed any keen interest in, the history of the absent echidnas. If he'd found something out about them he'd go looking certainly. Amy pushed the paper off of the keyboard. It wasn't much but she could perhaps at least look up anything that might give a hint where Knuckles would have started looking.


	9. 08 A Day and a Night

The ropes had been tied to immobilise not further injure, but that had been a day and a night ago and Knuckles could no longer support his own weight on his feet all of the time and he sagged against the ropes. Hanging in them until they bit in too tightly and then locking his knees to press back against the post to take the weight off them until he tired and fell forward again. Around dawn someone had retied the ropes which helped a bit at the cost of further limiting his range of movement. He'd been too slow to open his eyes and look round to see who.

He left his eyes closed, the daylight was painful and the expressions when people looked at him only slightly less so. Though he'd heard no one this morning. Anyone who wanted him dead was either working up the nerve, or seeing if anyone else would do it first, or waiting for time to do it for them.

Abruptly, a blow to the forehead turned his vision starry even with his eyes already shut.

Someone had acted after all. Blood ran down his face, into his eyes and mouth. He spat. Salt and copper. Another blow to the side of his face. His ribs. He forced his eyes open, but saw no one. Another blow and something fell at his feet. A stone, Someone was throwing stones.

Or more than one someone because the next blow was from the other side and there were voices.

"Bet you daren't!"

"No? Watch me."

The voices were belligerent. Young, but that meant nothing, Knuckles knew. He'd been young the first time he fought off attackers on the Island. Youth could be as ruthless as age.

He thought he was prepared for one last, fatal attack. He was however utterly unprepared for someone to pull hard on his tail and laugh.

Incongruous, trivial and he cried out anyway because after hours of standing his back was a dull, hot ache and this yank at the base of his spine was like another blow.

His own pained cry was followed by another, angry one. Shaski's voice and after the past few days it was pure instinct to flinch away from that voice especially raised in anger and Knuckles had already reacted, throwing himself against the ropes before conscious thought kicked in and he stilled, registering what he was seeing.

Shaski was marching a teenaged echidna round from behind Knuckles, his fist clamped on a handful of the boy's spines. He brought him to a halt in front of Knuckles, drew his own knife from his belt and slapped it into the boy's hand.

"Well?" he demanded as the boy stared between them, looking terrified. "Are you going to kill him?"

He waited long moments until it was obvious that the answer was 'no', then snatched the knife back from the boy's limp hand.

"You kill him, you help him or you leave him the hell alone." He gave the boy a shove and he fled.

Shaski stood watching him go. Knuckles watched him in turn, unable to account for his intervention. Shaski turned away from the direction the boy had taken and must have picked up on Knuckles' confusion because he answered the unspoken question.

"The trial is live or die," he said roughly, almost angrily. "Not two more days of battery."

Knuckles fought to speak because there was something else he couldn't work out.

"Why hasn't anyone already..." he ran out of breath but Shaski had guessed the question anyway.

"Why has nobody killed you already?" Shaski stared at him intently. "Do you really not know?" His voice sharpened. "How many have _you_ killed to defend your controller?"

Muzzily, Knuckles tried to see the connection. If what they'd been telling him was true about his memory he had no way of answering accurately in any case. Even knowing the risk of attackers returning or telling other about the Island he always - as far as he _knew_ he had always - tried to drive off rather than kill. But not at the cost of a direct threat to the Emerald's or the Island's safety and so the answer was not zero.

"Well?"

Shaski didn't seem likely to take silence for an answer.

"Three." Three that he knew for certain. Three not counting those he'd sent away wounded badly enough they might well have succumbed before reaching wherever they called home. Three not counting those whose aircraft he'd seen descending from the Island pouring smoke or sparks.

Shaski didn't contest the number.

"And was it _easy_?" he demanded. "You were right, they were wrong, they were a threat - so you must have believed. So was it easy?"

"No."

Knuckles remembered all three faces, both the names he'd overheard. The first had been alone and he'd never learned his name. They'd fought at the edge of the Island, it had almost been an accident that he went over. In realisation, Knuckles had grabbed for him a moment too late. The other two had been together and startlingly well prepared and armed. Knuckles had been forced to run in the end, bleeding, gasping, staggering ahead of them, triggering trap after trap behind himself. He'd only heard one of them, Bracken, scream as he died, but the other, Jaspar, he'd looked straight at. For a moment they were at a standstill, Knuckles' back literally against the wall before he pushed away from it and stepped forward onto the pressure-plate that triggered the bridge collapse. He'd had time to see the sheer panic in Jaspar's eyes before he vanished into the darkness.

"No?" Shaski asked. "And were any of them already tied up and dying in front of you?"

"No."

"You have a low opinion of us, guardian if you expect us to kill so much more easily than even you do."

Knuckles didn't have the breath or energy for justifications so only watched as Shaski turned his back and walked away again.

* * *

The dog looked at the photo and raised an ear in curiosity.

"So who is he? A relative?"

Sonic resisted the urge to snap back an indignant retort. Plenty of people confused hedgehogs with porcupines though both species found it downright rude, and Sonic supposed extending that confusion to an unfamiliar species like an echidna was not entirely unexpected. Spines were spines to some people.

He ran his hand over his own and sighed.

"No. Just a friend. So have you seen him?"

"Nope," the dog didn't bother to take a second look at the photo. "I'd remember, Not too many bright red porcupines to the dozen are there?"

Sonic gritted his teeth and reminded himself there was absolutely no point complicating matters with Knuckles' actual species. "You'll ask around though? Quietly?"

"Sure thing." The dog looked up, noticing Sonic's tension for the first time. "People will want to help, Sonic. They remember what this zone would have been if you hadn't helped us."

They probably had a better idea than Sonic himself did he reflected. He'd blazed through here the first time - the destruction of the base and bots almost incidental to where he was trying to reach. He hadn't even remembered the name - Sharp- of the dog who'd led the resistance against Robotnik here until Amy had reminded him.

He forced himself to smile.

"Be easier if we could slap up some big posters though," Sharp said.

Sonic shook his head. "No. Absolutely not - it can't get back to Robotnik that he's missing."

"Need to know, eh?" Sharp shrugged amiably. "Well, I'm not asking - you know your business. I know who can be trusted to find out quietly, don't you worry."

"Thanks."

Sonic turned to leave and was interrupted by the beep of the radio. He fished it from the backpack and thumbed transmit.

"Sonic. Go ahead."

Vector's voice crackled through the handset.

"Hey, Sonic, are you somewhere you can talk?"

Sonic looked around. "No. Wait a sec."

He lowered the handset and turned to Sharp.

"I gotta move, Thanks."

Sharp raised a hand. "No prob, I'll let you know if I hear anything."

Sonic nodded then turned and accelerated out of town, skidding to a stop well outside on a currently empty dirt road. He raised the handset again.

"Now I can. What is it?"

"I've had to pull Charmy off searching and get him back up here. This place is too dangerous right now without someone who can fly. Amy went down off a bridge just this morning which I _know_ used to be solid."

Shock shot through Sonic. "Is she alright? What's she even doing up there?"

"Bit bruised, only luck her foot caught in the rope though. We're having Charmy play escort every time someone needs to go anywhere now. Tails brought Amy up - she wanted to check on the written stuff here that Knuckles has been going through. Thinks there might be something in that to say where he went - if he went on purpose."

"Okay. Keep Charmy with you then, I'll manage down here - have you heard from Tails since?"

"No."

A crackle of static and Tails voice joined the frequency.

"I'm here, Sonic. I've been leaving the radio tuned, listening in."

"Good." Sonic said. "What's news?"

"Nothing much yet. Power drain on the Master Emerald still reads as high, but it's not fluctuating as much. Vector - what's it like up there?"

"Dark," said Vector, flatly. There was a pause. "Creepy, actually. And..." A longer pause. "Listen, we are sure - aren't we - that Knuckles can't still be up here somewhere?"

Sonic frowned. "Sure as we can be. Why?"

"Well, you're going to think I'm nuts and Espio says it's just the wind in the tunnels but sometimes... There's noises."

"Noises?" Tails sound as confused as Sonic felt. "From where? The Emerald?"

"It's hard to tell. The echoes here are weird, that's why Esp reckons it's just the wind but it doesn't always sound like the wind. The first time I heard it I went looking for the others because I thought one of them must have been hurt. I swear, guys, sometimes it sounds just like there's someone up here screaming. Outside or in the next tunnel over but you never find anything when you look. I don't mind telling you it's giving me the heebie jeebies."

There was another long pause, clearly no one had much idea what to do with this information. Tails spoke first.

"And what about the Island itself? Is it stable?"

"Mostly," Vector grunted. "There were some pretty big quakes after we arrived but they seem to have calmed down. It's a bit... up and down though. Sinks fast enough to notice then sort of recovers and we're going back up again."

"That makes sense," Tails said. "Tallies with my readings of the Emerald anyway. I'm working on trying to make the equipment portable. I'm hoping I'll get different reading from different places and be able to find where the power drain is coming _from."_

 _"_ Well keep at it,"Sonic said. "For now I don't see what else we can do."

"Sonic," Tails jumped back in as Sonic was about to put the radio away. "There's something else. Vector wondered if Knuckles was still on the Island - if he was we couldn't find him, but... Chaos and Tikal were trapped _inside_ the Emerald. What if the sounds Vector heard were..."

Sonic sighed. "Tails, if Knuckles has somehow got himself stuck _in_ the Emerald then I _really_ don't know what we can do. Let's rule everything else out first okay?"

"Okay. Talk later then," Tails' voice was quiet and Sonic couldn't find any reassurance to offer. He rubbed his forehead and tried not to think of this new possible problem. They were chasing enough wild geese all over the planet as it was.

* * *

Sunset. At least Knuckles thought it was sunset, his vision had been fading in and out, or maybe he'd been unconscious again. It was no longer possible to tell the difference. He felt distanced, senses numbed, detached, drifting in and out of darkness. It was real sunset though, it was colder, he was shivering. So why did his skin still feel flushed and burning beneath his fur? His head pounded, pulse hammering in his temples. Fast, too fast, way too fast. Pins and needles in his arms and legs where he hung in the ropes. It didn't matter much, he was too dizzy to stand even if he'd had the strength.

His concentration came and went. When it came he pushed back against the Master Emerald which was only another enemy now, forcing him to endure what should be long over with. When his concentration or consciousness waned he felt it rally; fighting back, forcing his blood to flow, his heart to beat, his lungs to drag air in and out.

They were right to be disgusted, the echidnas here. It was deeply unnatural, this tormented twilight lingering. His body was not his own. That was as clear as daylight to him by now. It was the Master's and it held him as tightly and relentlessly as the ropes around him. Clutching and pinning him to this life. Urging him with every beat of his frenzied pulse to accept it, to take up the power, to destroy this place, to escape, to return to the Island, to the sky, to the shrine of the Emeralds.

He knew exactly how it would feel if he did. How the warmth and strength of it would flow through his aching, shaking body. His eyes drifted shut. It would be so easy. He knew exactly how easy it would be to draw down that power and be damned to the consequences,

And he forced his eyes open again because he knew something else as well. He knew that his control, eroded by pain and injury and exhaustion and by his tumbled, conflicted emotions would be inadequate to the task of moderating that power. Chaos energy had a way of distorting the intentions of even the purest of heart and mind and at the moment _his_ heart and mind were nothing but fear and anger and regret. The Master would use those the only way it knew, it would tear apart those who had torn at its Guardian and blot out this place so it would never be a threat again. Knuckles would not have the strength to stop it. Not if he let it begin.

Someone touched his shoulder and, although his eyes were wide open he was so lost in his thoughts and his vision so clouded, he hadn't seen them approach, couldn't focus on them now. He'd jumped at the touch and the movement sent shooting pains through every limb. He was sure he'd cried out, but no sound escaped his dry throat. Someone was speaking but he couldn't seem to process the sounds either. Someone had their hand under his muzzle tipping his head back. Helping him? Exposing his throat for a blade? He couldn't tell.

In any case he found he could muster nothing but relief for either prospect.


	10. 09 Dawning

No words filtered through Knuckles' faltering consciousness but the tone was hard. The hand that pushed his head back and held his jaw, was hard. There was water in his mouth and for a moment he was drowning because he couldn't make his throat work, couldn't tell whether he was managing to work his cracked, dry lips and tongue. Spluttering and choking, he managed to get down about half the mouthful of water.

There was more, but his jaw was released and this second mouthful went down easier.

It seemed to take a long time to empty the cup. Or maybe there was more than one cup. With some mouthfuls he caught the taste of blood. Either his gums or lips were bleeding where the cup had been knocked roughly against his teeth. It was hard to stay awake but the instinctive panic when the water hit the back of his throat unexpectedly was enough to make him fight for awareness.

There were other voices. Angry. But still no one attacked him.

The water was gone. He drifted.

The day cooled. The water bringer came three more times before Knuckles' vision and awareness cleared enough to register details. Russet furred, wiry though still taller than him, spines swept back from her face by a loose beaded headband. An expression of intense distaste on her face as though even the amount of physical contact required to push his head back and press the cup to his mouth disgusted her.

How much time had passed? The sun was low in his eyes but still up. Less than six hours then or else more than a full day and a half. No, it had to be the same day. Nightfall would mark the end of the second day. The end. If it was more than a day then the trial had ended without his release and there was no end in sight.

There were a lot of people around. Because it was the end? The same day then.

The Master had been at him while he was unconscious, that was why he felt more than six hours worth better. Keeping him alive. Meddling with his metabolism, forcing his body to absorb the water unnaturally fast. It could teleport people across the whole planet in a moment, moving fluids between cells must be nothing at all to it.

He was wrong, maybe, to have thought he could ever have died here, that the controller would ever have released its Guardian to death.

* * *

The radio crackled and Sonic skidded to a halt in time to hear Amy's voice.

"Hey, Amy. Something?" he asked, falling into an effortless jog as he spoke.

"Maybe. Where are you? Can I send Tails to bring you up here?"

Sonic glanced at the lowering sun.

"Depends where he is. Is he going to have daylight to land?"

"Where are you?"

Sonic glanced around, calculating. "Uh, about twenty miles west of Hot Springs at the edge of Hilltop."

There was a pause.

"Okay. He'll be coming from the south-west."

"On it." Sonic stuffed the radio away and broke into a full run. He knew he was conspicuous from the air at full speed, a blue streak, trailing a rooster-tail of dust on the dry track. Tails' low flying and sharp eyes had never failed to spot him and this time was no exception. Tails banked around him once, assessing the wind then set down, the Tornado bouncing and skipping over the rough ground.

Sonic climbed aboard, "Not the ideal landing strip, buddy."

Tails shrugged. "I beefed up the gear and stuck some tundra tires on - thought we might need to land out while we searched."

"Looks like you were right." Sonic settled himself into the passenger seat. "So what's Amy got?"

"S'both of us really. You kinda need to look. We need to mark up where you've been already to see if it's anything."

Sonic frowned. This seemed a looser lead than he'd hoped.

The sun had just slipped past the horizon when they touched down on the plains of Lava Reef. Tails secured the aircraft and they headed underground,

The Emerald chamber was in a state of utter disorder and Sonic pulled up short at the sight.

In one corner Amy was surrounded by a set of maps laid out across most of the floor. In another what looked like all of the emerald tracking equipment from Tails' workshop had been installed.

A further map marked up with the places Sonic had already visited to search was spread over the steps leading up to the Master Emerald itself.

At the top of the steps Vector and Mighty had a camp stove set up and seemed to be in the middle of cooking a meal. A scatter of blankets and sleeping mats surrounded it in in a sort of untidy nest.

"Woah," Sonic said. "Once we do find Knuckles you better be ready to clear this lot up pretty damn quick!"

Amy dismissed this with a wave. "Update that map, Sonic, then look at this."

Sonic glanced at Tails who only shrugged and smiled at the command in Amy's tone.

"There, there, there and there," Sonic said with a swipe of the marker pen. "And I left messages here and here." He added dots.

Amy looked from the map on the steps to the ones laid out on the floor and moved three of them to a pile at the edge.

Tails moved to lean over her shoulder. Sonic joined them, bemused. As he did, a sound echoed through the chamber which made all his fur stand on end. It didn't stop and he flattened his ears against his head and swore loudly.

"What the hell is that!"

Vector who'd pulled his ever present headphones back onto his ears to muffle the sound, shrugged. "Told you there were noises. No one thinks it's the wind any more."

Appalled, Sonic made himself pay attention. Listening. Vector had said it sounded like screaming but this was a moan. A breathless, unending moan of pain or despair or grief. Impossible to tell which but nonetheless sounding like someone at their absolute wits end, just yards away.

Except there was no one there.

It stopped.

Everyone had frozen at the sound and now moved again, restlessly, as though physically shaking it off.

Sonic looked at Tails automatically for suggestions but the fox just shrugged. "I don't know, Sonic. It shows up on the Emerald readings but that doesn't get my any further along because it could still be the Emerald itself, or the Island or Knuckles I'm picking up."

Sonic shook himself too and looked back at the maps. A long red piece of string had been stretched over the remaining ones, pinned to the ground at either end.

"Okay - You want to give me a clue here?"

Tail pointed. "That pin represents where we are, here with the Master Emerald on the Island. The string is the direction I _think_ I'm tracking the power drain from. The source theoretically could be anywhere along that line around the whole planet. But Amy found the maps here on the Island. They don't cover the whole surface but we don't think Knuckles would have left the Island blind without a plan of some sort so it's likely he's someone on one of the maps if he's on the surface.

"But you don't know which one except under probably on the line somewhere."

"Right. We don't even really know what I'm tracking, Knuckles or something else that's affecting the Emerald. We've taken out the maps were you've already searched the whole area but we don't know we've got all the maps that are here. These weren't all in one place. We spent the last two days finding them. That's where Espio and Charmy are now, looking for more. They were in caves all over the Island. Here, Lava Reef, Sandopolis, the old mine workings."

"Where else are there underground tunnels on the Island, Sonic," Amy asked.

"Where aren't there?" Sonic snorted. "Um, Hydrocity?"

"Can't see paper surviving down there for long," Tails said.

"Icecap?"

"I said that," Tails agreed, "But no one could find a way in. The way we went is blocked."

"It just ices over doesn't it? You have to bash it. I got in there when I was looking for Knuckles."

"Better be you who goes to search then." Amy said. "But for goodness sake take Tails or Charmy, you can't put your feet anywhere here at the moment without a chance it of all giving way. And wait for daylight!"

"Caves, Amy." Sonic drew out the word. "Not a lot of daylight in caves."

"Yeah, but getting there without running into a crevasse would probably help."

Sonic was about to argue but was interrupted by the noisy approach of Charmy and Espio. They were empty handed, Charmy hovering at Espio's shoulder and both looked tired and grubby. They headed straight for Vector and the stove, raising a hand to wave greeting at Sonic and shaking their heads at Amy as they passed.

"Nothing new," she sighed.

Charmy folded his wings and dropped onto the top step with a thump.

"Gimme sugar and roll me into bed!" he groaned. "Five times the flippin' ground let go under us. I think my arms are two inches longer than when we started."

"Yours and mine both," muttered Espio. "Where's left, Amy? Sonic?"

"Ice Cap," said Sonic. "But I'm going. Tails'll come, won't you."

To Sonic's astonishment Tails hesitated. "If you need me to, but... uh there's another idea I want to follow up too."

"Yeah?"

Tails pointed at the line. "We don't know where on this line the source of the power drain is. But if I could measure again from far enough away from it I could get a cross cut. Y'know like RF triangulation?"

Sonic did not remotely know, but was prepared to take Tails' word for it.

"Okay..." He waited for the rest of the explanation.

"I think I could narrow it to within a few miles that way. Ideally we'd move the Island, but Knuckles can do that, we can't. So I'll have to try and move the equipment again and then adjust for the Emerald itself, filter it out." He made a face. "Only problem is, I moved it here because I hadn't figured out how to do that."

"It's alright, we can do both,"Sonic assured him. "Vector and mighty can help you. Me and Charmy'll look for the rest of the maps and Espio and Amy can guard here, I can be back in double-quick if there's a prob."

Sonic frowned. That did mean he'd have to wait until morning to search Ice Cap. Charmy was already nodding off.

Reluctantly he climbed the steps to join them and settle in for the night.

* * *

The crowd had stopped getting bigger. Knuckles wondered if it was the whole village. The sun had slid below the tree-line some time ago and in the twilight Curaca, Olec and Shaski stepped forward.

Curaca spoke.

"By the tolerance of the village this Guardian has been allowed to live. May none of us regret it."

The phrasing sounded ominous to Knuckles but Curaca's tone was formal so perhaps it was merely a set form of words for a trial's conclusion.

The same two echidnas who'd acted as Shaski's guards throughout cut the ropes and he staggered but managed to retain his feet. He met none of the eyes trained upon him.

"This way," Curaca said in a tone clearly aimed at him and not the crowd at large. Knuckles followed her, as did Olec and Shaski, though not the other two.

They stopped in an underground, rock-walled, pressed earth floored room which Knuckles took in little of. Curaca was speaking again.

"I meant it, about your survival being only at the tolerance of the village. Do not push that tolerance. If you try to leave you will be killed. If you use the controller you will be killed. Until you are healed enough to make your own arrangements you will be provided with supplies and allowed to use this sleeping space. After that you will be expected to work to repay the debt you owe this village and to earn you own living. Do you understand?"

Knuckles met her eyes this time, trying to work out any emotion behind the matter of fact words and failing.

"Yes," he said and hesitated. "But-" Apprehension choked off his words a second time but he forced himself to explain. "I won't use..." He wavered between their terminology and his. "...the controller against you. I won't use it for myself. But I can't stop it from affecting the way I heal. I did try." He lowered his eyes, shame joining the apprehension because the admission was an admission of failure, the admission of the attempt an admission of giving up, of cowardice.

Curaca nodded acknowledgement. "Continue to do so and it will not be treated as malice."

She turned for the door and the others followed her lead.

A thought struck Knuckles as her hand pushed it open.

"Please?" He called. "Can you tell me who brought me the water?"

Curaca and Olec both looked at Shaski. His face was as unreadable as Curaca's had been - Knuckles was starting to understand why his own habitual reticence to reveal his feelings frustrated Sonic so much.

"That was Mazi," Shaski said after a moment. "My eldest daughter.


	11. 10 Memory Recorded and Otherwise

Knuckles looked around the room for the first time. He could hear running water but it took him long moments to realise that the ledge running the length of one wall was actually a water channel cut into the rock, the whole room built around it. A dipper hung on a lanyard in one corner and he drank and drank, leaning against the slight curve of the wall. The room was furnished, not an empty cell. A low bed with a thin, undyed blanket, a wooden table, two chairs - one wooden, one wicker - rag rugs on the floor, a fireplace. The table had two baskets on it and he made himself go and look at them because Curaca had mentioned supplies and he needed food and if he slept first, as he truly wanted to, he'd only be hungrier and weaker on waking.

There _was_ food in one of the baskets. Dried fruit mainly. He slumped into the wicker chair to eat. Some of it was unfamiliar, some sweet, some sharp, but it was all welcome. He was full sooner than he'd had expected and asleep there in the chair before he'd decided to investigate the other basket.

He woke stiff and confused. The room was darker. He looked around, located the oil lamp, sputtering, almost out. Beside it was a bottle of oil and he refilled it carefully before returning to the table to investigate the other basket which proved to be a first aid kit of sorts. He recognised most of the medicinal plants and slowly he cleaned his injuries, reopening some of them in the process and binding up the worst ones. He wound layer after layer of bandages around his hands, not wanting to even see the damage there. He could do nothing for his shoulder other than strap the arm close in a sling and hope it healed with a reasonable amount of movement. He was still grubby everywhere else but, satisfied he'd done what he could, he staggered over to the bed, lay at length on top of the cover and slept again.

This time he woke curled into a tight ball, shaking but unable to place what had startled him until there was a second rapping at the door. Someone was _knocking_ for entrance? The notion was so utterly incongruous with his treatment since arriving here it was hard to credit and there was a third knock before he gathered his wits to croak a, "Yes?"

Curaca and Olec entered the room and without comment sat them selves in the two chairs, leaving Knuckles still trying to puzzle out what his exact status was. In the absence of direction, he stayed sitting on the bed, noting distantly that the pale coverlet was spotted with drying blood. Olec followed his eye-line to the cover then looked into the basket on the table.

"You didn't use the stanchwort?"

Knuckles shook his head. "I don't know what that is."

Olec reached it and held up a broad leafed, slightly fuzzy plant. "It would have sealed some of the smaller cuts."

Knuckles nodded, but despite the mess on the bed-cover everything appeared to have stopped bleeding again.

"You're very quiet, guardian," Curaca said with a sharpness in her voice that made Knuckles stare at her face in the hope it wasn't still suspicion. He lowered his eyes again.

"I don't know what to say. I didn't expect to be alive to say anything."

There was a pause.

"Then we'll start at the beginning," said Curaca. "Since you don't know a true given name to tell me, what would you have us call you?"

Knuckles hesitated. 'Guardian' was an accusation, 'Knuckles' a silly nickname transformed into a nasty joke by their interrogation, but what else did he have?

"Nothing," he said after a moment. "You don't have to call me anything. It doesn't matter."

Neither of the other echidnas pressed the issue.

"And I asked how long you'd been a guardian," said Curaca, raising her hand to forestall his protest that he didn't know and continued. "Do you know how old you are"?

He shook his head.

"Can you guess?"

He nodded slowly because he'd had this conversation with the Sonic and the others and the consensus had been that he and the hedgehog were similar ages.

"19 or 20." He hesitated. "Wh-" He broke off uncertainly halfway through the question.

"Why?" Curaca asked. "Because I suspect the things you don't remember are larger than you think. We consider young echidnas adults at 15. Were you already alone as guardian by then? Five years ago?"

"Yes."

"You're very certain. Why?"

"Five years ago was the year before Sonic and Tails came, following Robotnik. I'd already been guardian for years by then."

"You're certain it was four years ago you met them then? How do you know for sure?"

Knuckles stared at his toes, the true answer so out of place in both his life before and after arriving here that it was humiliating.

"Birthday presents," he eventually admitted. "I've four from them. I didn't know the date so Sonic made it up."

Although no one had asked he felt the need to explain more clearly. "He came back to the Island a few months after... everything... He said it was just to 'see' me." Knuckles met Curaca's eyes for a brief moment. "You said the controller had taken away my understanding of what friendship was. Maybe that's true, because I didn't know why he would do that. I'd done nothing but suspect him and attack him. A brief alliance against Robotnik when I was too injured to have any other options wasn't friendship. I didn't think it was. Sonic said it was a start."

Knuckles shrugged lopsidedly. "I suppose he was right. And so were you."

Curaca made a non-committal sound and went back to the subject of time. "You say you'd been guardian for 'years' before meeting Sonic. How do you know it was that long?"

"I remember specific attacks on the Island. Many of them. But there were long gaps, whole seasons sometimes, between them." He searched for a specific example. "Sonic came in the summer - the previous winter had been mild and dry, and the summer before even hotter - it's why the zone burned so easily and so badly when Robotnik set it alight."

"And the year before that?"

"Colder. I'd taken the Island far north, there'd been too many attacks, I thought it would be safer, harder to get to and I had plenty of stored food because the year before that I hadn't kept enough by and it had been hard." Knuckles fought down a shiver at the memory. That had been the last time the Master Emerald had kept him alive when he should have been dead. Starved on the snow.

"How many years can you pick out some clear incident to mark them like that? Count back now, if you can."

Knuckles frowned, not understanding, but tried.

"The winter before that had been windy - gales. It made it hard to cover the ground, to be where I was needed. A wolf and a hare both got as far as Hidden Palace that year. The winter before that was good, spring was early but the melt-water almost overflowed Hydrocity. There was one attacker I never even saw before he drowned there. I found him washed up." It had been a clear spring day and so pleasant up until the discovery. Knuckles shivered again. The things that stuck in the memory to mark time were not the good things.

"Almost no one came the year before that. Cold again, wet, icy even outside of Ice Cap, I broke my tail falling on the ice." It had healed quickly but crooked. "And my shoulder was still bad in the damp from almost a year before that too. I know it was a year because I remember wondering how it _could_ still hurt a year later, but it was the damp and cold. It hadn't been so damp and cold the first winter after it happened."

"What happened to your shoulder?"

Knuckles touched the currently injured one. "It was the other shoulder. Someone jumped me in the air. A bird. He'd flown up looking for the Island but hadn't landed. I didn't quite register he was there."

"What happened?"

"I drove him off." Knuckles voice was low and he didn't lift his eyes from the floor. The hawk was one of those which he may, after all, have killed without being certain of it. If his injuries had overcome him while still flying down then he had fallen and he was dead.

Curaca didn't comment on that aspect though.

"If your count and your guess are both right, then you were no more than ten years old then. Does that seem normal to you? For a ten year old to drive off an adult attacker after being ambushed and injured?"

Knuckles frowned. He'd done it by using the Master Emerald of course and he knew that wasn't 'normal'. Did they want that admission in words? He used it... He'd used it confidently, with familiarity and it was longer ago than he'd thought before actually counting, and so he couldn't have been ten could he? Ten was too small, too young, he'd remember if he'd been all that much younger and smaller than his attacker wouldn't he, regardless of the unnatural advantage?

"Keep counting," Curaca urged, the look on her face an unnerving blend of satisfaction and horror. Olec looked on silently. Solemn.

Knuckles struggled to sort out a sequence. Tallying years by landslips and attacks, by volcanic eruptions and weather and injuries until he was frightened himself by the length of the list.

"I don't understand!" He broke off. "Those were different winters! They were. I'm certain. But it doesn't work. Does it? It's too many. And I don't even remember being any younger, or less experienced than I am now. But I remember them so how can I not have noticed it's too many? Sonic even asked. Lots of times. How long I'd been on the Island."

Olec spoke for the first time since entering the room.

"The controller kept its guardians alive through injury and thirst and hunger. They became long lived in the shadow of its power because once invested it was wasteful to let them fade and die in the trivial number of mortal years of ordinary echidnas. But then, one day there was only one left and long lived was not long enough."

Knuckles was shaking his head. "You're guessing! You didn't even know I _was_ the last until I told you!" He silenced himself, fear of an angry reaction to his outburst making his breathing so rapid he grew dizzy.

"Yes, it is only a theory. But it's a theory based on the facts we have. Before contact was lost we kept records too. Names of guardians, dates, events we knew of on the Floating Island." Olec sounded unruffled. "You mentioned ruins. Do you remember a time when they were standing?"

"No! Of course not!"

"A time when you could read more of the carvings?"

Knuckles thought about it. "Yes, some. The writing weathered on the surface."

"Do you know how long that takes?"

Knuckles stared at him, his mind and heart racing.

"Even if it's true why would I forget?"

"You haven't forgotten. Not entirely. You've just told us about it."

Knuckles dismissed this as detail. "Not notice then. Overlook it. For... however long... If the Master - the controller- somehow _made_ me simply not notice how long I'd really been guardian what possible advantage is gained?"

Olec still watched him steadily, Curaca now observing them both.

"It avoided _this_." Olec said. "Alarm. Questioning. Perhaps restlessness?"

Knuckles struggled to give the idea space in his head. Space to think it about it objectively , to work out whether it really fit the facts or not. It was still difficult to think clearly. And instinct railed against the idea. But since his memory was demonstrably unreliable, how could he trust instinct any better?

He closed his eyes, trying to summon some concentration to think rationally but it was a mistake - dizziness swept over him and he had to clutch the edges of the bed to keep upright.

"Think about it." Olec said, and both he and Curaca rose to leave.

Knuckles tried, lying back down to ease his pounding head, but he instead slipped back into sleep, to dream a parade of endless winters..

* * *

The snow was pink and orange with the dawn as Sonic raced across it, Charmy's wings a blur as he kept pace, flying close, tucked into the hedgehog's slipstream. Sheer momentum was all that was keeping Sonic's feet under him as he traversed soft snow that almost had him stumbling, steep slopes where half the snow came down along with him and glittering ice fields that threatened a fall with every step. Every so often Charmy hauled him back onto an even keel or heaved him the rest of the way over a dead-fall, feet hammering wildly against slick, falling rock in a frantic race against gravity.

They were both breathless by the time Sonic slid to a stop before a sheer ice wall. The sun had not yet risen high enough to illuminate it and in the shadows the air was freezing. Sonic caught his breath quickly, ducked and spun, crashing through the wall in a shower of damp smashed ice. Charmy followed him.

Before they'd gone two steps Sonic leaped again, some instinct or half-heard sound propelling him forward, swiping up Charmy as he went and flinging them both out of the path of a falling icicle twice their size. They both stared at it, split but largely intact even after the fall. Sonic shook his head spitting out a mouthful of snow and muttering about 'damn paranoid stupid echidna guardians"

"I swear if we find him alive I'm going to kill him myself for this performance!"

He caught Charmy's startled expression, and softened his words with a smile. "We're _going_ to find him. This way."

They set off into the dim, blue light, watching every footfall on the treacherous ground.

Progress was slower once in the ice tunnels in the near dark. They'd brought torches, and once the sun was overhead the light filtered down but even so the going underfoot was poor. Sonic had been through the caverns recently, looking for Knuckles but they changed quickly and he couldn't take the same path, the routes melting and refreezing, paths blocks by new snow drifts frozen solid or bridges of ice which had now melted away. They were forced to double back on themselves more than once, and every fall became more dangerous as Charmy tired.

"There's nothing here," Sonic said eventually when they'd paused a moment for Charmy to stretch out his arms give his wings a brief rest. "I'd have noticed." He looked up. "Light'll be going soon as well. And this is about as deep as it gets. Rock from here down."

He stamped his foot to demonstrate. The ice was dull here, mucky with dirt from the underlying soil frozen in. He stretched. "Still we've come this far. Can't hurt to check the rest of the way. Ready?"

In answer Charmy kicked off the ground and waited, hovering expectantly.

Sonic gave him a mock salute. "Just as well." He pointed, "'Cause I don't like the look of that bridge!"

The bridge in question was wooden, instead of the usual polished rock or shifting ice and filled the entire floor of the tunnel. Sonic it turned out was quite right not to trust it as it gave under the first kick he gave it before even thinking about crossing. He peered down the hole.

"Hmm. Not the most convincing trap."

Charmy hovered closer. "I think it broke."

Sonic glanced down. "Yeah, you're right. It's rotten, it didn't drop from the hinges." He pulled at the rotten wood. "Huh. It hinges up not down." He stared at it.

"Charmy..."

The bee held out his hands to swing the hedgehog over the gap. Sonic waved him off.

"It's not a bridge." Sonic shone his torch down. "Can you fly down and look? It's not a bridge, it's a hatchway. It must have been frozen over before, the water melted and softened the wood even more until it gave. I didn't search there."

"It's a hole," Charmy said, doubtfully, but pointed his torch down and hovered his way down into the hole.

After a moment there was a shout. "It's _not_ a hole! There's a tunnel down here!"

Sonic knelt on the edge. "How far? Can I jump?"

"Hang on. Yeah! Go!"

Sonic hopped feet first into the hole, landed in a crouch and stood up. Charmy had backed off into the tunnel to make room. The both shone their torches into the darkness.

"Let's go!" Sonic felt more hopeful, At least this was something new.

The tunnel was short and gave onto a spiral staircase leading further down. The ground grew drier, then gave way to stone. The stairway ended in a small cave with a dressed stone door at the opposite end. Their breath clouded in the end but it was dry and marginally warmer than the ice caverns above. They head for the door, torches playing over the ground and walls.

On the other side of the door it was apparent a natural cave had been expanded. The walls and ledges cut into the walls held three crates in a space made for hundreds.

Sonic hurried to pull the lid off the closest and laughed aloud incredulously. "Well we wanted documents!"

He shone his torch on the stack of yellowing parchment inside. He couldn't read it, columns of words and what were possibly numbers. He dropped it back in. Opened another and another. Hoping for maps that would fill the gaps in Amy's floor-covering ad-hoc atlas. Or anything he could make sense of really.

Charmy had found sconces in the walls, oily torches and matches. He lit them.

Sonic looked round. How long did oil last before drying up? Had Knuckles been here recently? Sonic pulled off all the lids, rummaging through papers and parchments.

"Maybe we should get Amy, she knows what she's looking for..."

Even as he said it he pushed another long list aside and there was a map. Sonic gave a whoop and moved under the torchlight to look at it.

It was old. Hard to place with what he knew of the planet's geography except by coastlines and then only roughly. Tiny villages were now cities, cities gone completely, woods larger or smaller, rivers on a different course. Sonic put it safely to one side anyway and continued checking the crates. Once everything had been emptied and searched they came up holding three maps.

One was of the Floating Island itself, the other equally hard to match to current surface geography but possibly the area around Mobotropolis, albeit marked as a small town.

Sonic scooped them up.

"Let's go!"


	12. 11 Searching in the Dark

Once again Charmy dropped bodily into the nest of blankets on arrival back at the Master Emerald. Tails had worked quickly - all the equipment along with him and Vector were already gone. Sonic stayed on his feet to give Amy the maps they'd discovered.

"Any good?" he asked.

Amy knelt down and spread them out beside the others.

"These are really old."

"Yeah," Sonic agreed. "Loads of these places aren't there any more."

"I wonder if that's what the red circles mean." Amy bent closer to one of the surface maps.

"Red circles?" Sonic leaned over her. "I didn't notice. It was dark. Yeah most of them are gone."

He pointed at one after another. "That's under Oil Ocean. That cliff is miles inland from there now. Mystic Ruins is - well - ruins. Wonder if it was still a real city when this map was made."

"Are _any_ still there?" Amy stood and went to retrieve the modern map where they'd been plotting Sonic's search pattern.

They stared at it.

"No." Sonic frowned then pointed. "Well, that one's in the middle of a desert and that's in the middle of a jungle so who knows. But there's nothing marked for either on our 'now' map." He waved his hand at the papers on the floor. "Where does this fit with your strings and plots?"

Amy took the map and positioned it. "Oh!"

"Okay." Sonic said, "So possibly non-existent jungle town is on the line. What does that mean?"

"Maybe nothing," Amy said uncertainly. "We still have no idea why those places were marked. Or if Knuckles ever even saw them. What else was down there?"

Sonic shrugged. "Papers. Like lists. Columns of writing. Nothing readable. It was all in, y'know, echidna-squiggle. Why? You got an idea?"

Amy chewed her lip. "What if the village aren't marked because they're missing? What if they're marked because they were echidna settlements on the surface - and they're only gone now because the echidnas are gone?"

Sonic's eyes widened. "You think Knuckles went looking don't you? You kept that quiet!"

Amy waved this off. "I didn't want to jump to conclusions, or set anyone else off on tangents. But if Knuckles could read that writing it might have told him something we don't know about why the villages were marked. He'd know some of them weren't there any more, he'd be able to work it out the same way we did. But there's nothing recorded for those last two and they're both remote, uncharted, somewhere there _could_ maybe be a settlement no one knew about any more."

Sonic looked back at the maps and the string spread across them.

"And the jungle one _is_ in the direction Tails thinks the power drain on the Emerald is coming from." He decided instantly and made beckoning motions for the sheet. "Gimme the map then, I'm gonna to go look."

"You'll have to call Tails back, he went to set up that equipment."

Sonic huffed, barely able to keep still. "How long?"

Amy made a face. "Two, three hours?"

"We're going to run out of daylight again!"

Sonic paced around the chambers, the walls oppressive, confining, time pressing in, trickling away, the whole Island a limiting confining trap of a place. As long as he been running, searching, asking questions, he'd been able to convince himself that they'd find Knuckles, it and he'd be fine.

Perhaps he should have been reassured by the idea that Knuckles had left on purpose, but he wasn't. However hard he thought about it he couldn't make himself believe that the Emerald would be so creepily unstable-seeming if all that was going on was Knuckles having a nice little family reunion.

He was in trouble. Sonic was certain of it and the prospect of sitting, waiting, unable to get any closer to helping was unbearable. The hours ahead stretched out and he already knew it would be too much time to think. Had Knuckles really left deliberately? It would explain all the extra traps, precautions left for his absence. But if that was it then it meant that even now he didn't trust them, not entirely, not enough to tell them or ask for help.

Sonic was surprised how much that hurt.

He was shaken out of this gloomy, restless reverie by Amy shaking the map under his nose.

"Where are you going to have Tails drop you anyway? That village is two days in even for you in a straight line and I reckon you're going to have to try and stick to the paths to make any speed."

Sonic was ready to dismiss this but looked anyway. It was a distraction at least.

" _Are_ there paths?"

"Not on the modern map but they might still be there anyway. People trade up and down the river - there's a village here at the south end of the marsh and here halfway up the river. Maybe you could hire a boat."

Sonic gave her a sceptical look.

"Get real. I'm not going anywhere by _boat!_ "

"Sonic, it's a jungle! Unless you want to spindash your way through one yard at a time with a compass under your nose hoping you haven't mis-steered then you'll need a path. And if Knuckles followed this map that's the way he'll have gone - you might find news, he might have been hurt on the way, anything!"

"Knuckles would have gone in a straight line." Sonic said firmly. "If whatever is drawing on the Emerald isn't _him_ he might even have followed that."

"Which _you_ can't, and Tails can't without equipment which, in case you haven't noticed is a long way off portable hence why we're stuck waiting!"

"You said there weren't paths on the modern map."

"No but there are on the older one and even overgrown paths are better than no paths."

"That map might be a hundred years old! A hundred years overgrown is _gone_!"

"And if the path is that overgrown what's the rest of the jungle like?"

Sonic opened his mouth by reflex to argue further but closed it again. It wasn't worth an argument. He'd decide on the ground.

"Fine. I'll check in at this swamp village - but I'm going to in from there to see what it's like. If I can run it I will."

* * *

The next time Knuckles jerked out of sleep to the sound of rapping on the door the light was completely out. He staggered to his feet to look for it, heartily fed up of the groggy confusion which made everything twice as difficult. He was a light sleeper as a normal rule but he'd been out like a stone and it was hard to shake it off. He found the lamp he was looking for by colliding with it and almost sending it to the floor.

Whoever was knocking banged again then gave up and opened the door. The small spill of light was enough for Knuckles to find and light the lamp. Shaski stood in the doorway but didn't enter. Knuckles just barely kept himself from startling backwards into the lamp again but didn't manage to find any words with which to address him.

"You are expected to eat with everyone else." Shaski spoke first. "That basket is the only food that will be brought to you here."

Knuckles looked at it automatically. "I could... get my own... outside...?"

He did not feel remotely ready to be back under the eyes of the whole village. The thought made him feel vaguely sick rather than hungry.

"Stealing from the communal foraging area will _not_ improve anyone's tolerance of you." Shaski stared at him. "You'll do as you're told. You were spared at everyone's risk. It doesn't mean you're trusted. Doesn't mean you're forgiven." He turned. "It's this way."

Knuckles followed after him, keeping his eyes on the floor even when they entered what he could hear, and tell from the air movements around him was a large, crowded cavern. How much of this area had they hollowed out? There were many voices. Shaski's cut over them.

"Do you know your way back?"

"Yes."

"Don't stray."

"No."

Shaski moved away and Knuckles raised his eyes to watch him join a group of other echidnas, including the girl, Mazi, who'd brought him water. She didn't look at him and after a moment he realised he was staring and dropped his gaze back to the floor.

 _Don't stray._ He wasn't being guarded? They'd said he'd be killed if he tried to leave or use the controller, but Curaca and Olec had come to him unarmed, alone, and Shaski had only his belt knife. They knew by now then that it was an empty threat. Albeit it an empty threat that even his own body believed - his pulse had jumped wildly at the sight of Shaski in the doorway, that broad-bladed knife loose at his side. His breath shortened now as he thought of the mere possibility of defying them and fleeing for the Island.

Unfriendly eyes had noticed the fact that he'd stopped stock still and the temptation was strong to run, and keep running. But if he ran now it would all have been for nothing. Every injury, every day spent whimpering halfway between life and death, every humiliating capitulation would have been for nothing if he ran without finding out what it was they knew.

He raised his eyes and looked around properly for the first time. The cavern was large as he'd suspected. filled with tables and chairs, some had just one clearly related group around it, other had mixed groups of similar ages. Some had been pushed together to form larger clusters. Lamps lined the edge of the cavern and stood on a half pillar in the centre as well. To his right a longer one-piece table contained an array of food. Fresh fruits, roast vegetables, fried bugs still in a pan, and a tureen of something which a quick glance revealed to be probably a sort of bean stew.

Other echidnas were coming and going from this table collecting food and after a moment, cautiously, half expecting someone to try and stop him any moment, Knuckles took a dish from a stack at the end, holding it awkwardly in the hand that protruded from his improvised sling and filling it with the other.. He kept the servings small, partly out of fear of breaking some etiquette and partly because his stomach was so unsettled with nerves he wasn't sure of his appetite though he knew he needed food.

"Going to eat that then, are you?"

Knuckles nearly lost his grip on the bowl at the sudden voice and inwardly cursed himself for such timidity.

"Thought guardians lived on fresh air and - I don't know - evil magic chaos sparkles or something."

"No," Knuckles said, keeping his voice down, not wanting draw further attention. "I eat."

He wondered if it was acceptable to take the bowl back to his room. There were no empty tables.

"Space there."

Knuckles looked up at the echidna who'd spoken. There was a sharp, challenging, provocative tone to his words but it somehow stopped short of entirely hostile. If nothing else, he was another echidna who was willing to talk to him. Knuckles went where he pointed and sat down. The other echidna sat opposite him. His fur was brown, longer than average and his spines hung loose and undecorated.

Knuckles snatched glimpses between slowly starting on his food. He was about Knuckles' age. Or at least the age he'd thought himself to be. Sonic's age maybe and on reflection there was something of the hedgehog's attitude about him. He clearly was perfectly aware than many people in the room were staring at him as the first one to go and talk to the guardian and equally clearly perfectly happy with the attention.

"So, Mazi says she did it because having _you_ couldn't be any worse than having all that chaos dropped on someone random who might turn out worse."

It wasn't a question, but it made sense so Knuckles nodded.

"She said if what happened out there wasn't enough to make you use the controller to attack us then nothing was."

Knuckles stopped eating.

"I will not harm this place or anyone here." He dug his spoon back into the stew, but was too tired to feel much enthusiasm for it and stopped again. "I never would have."

"That so?"

Knuckles paused. If he didn't believe him why were they only talking about this, not something worse?

"Yes," he said simply.

"Well, she convinced enough people that here you sit alive."

Not a question. "Yes."

"Don't say much do you?"

Knuckles hesitated again but he still didn't have a better answer to that than the one he'd given Curaca.

"I don't know what I'm expected to say."

"You don't think you might start with 'sorry'?"

"Sorry?" Knuckles belatedly noticed this was another one word answer but the other echidna was already talking again.

"As in, sorry we kidnapped your children and tried to turn them into guardians? Sorry we killed off the ones who didn't make it in the process? Sorry we constantly demanded supplies then left you to fend for yourselves whenever the harvest was bad or illness or fire or flood came? Sorry we ran away back to the sky when you were attacked? Sorry we razed from existence the only village that ever dared try to destroy the controller and end it?"

Knuckles reeled back in his chair, his spoon dropping from suddenly clumsy fingers with a clatter. It was too much to process, too quickly, too hot on the heels of what had seemed like only cautious curiosity and natural suspicion. He couldn't deal with more accusations. Not yet. He didn't have the resources _left_ to deal with it. He was cold, giddy, queasy...

No.

Knuckles forced his breathing to slow, forced himself to relax, closed his eyes until the sick swooping in his stomach subsided. He had taken little enough of the food, he could not physically afford to either lose it to nausea, or fail to finish it.

"Hey!"

Knuckles opened his eyes reluctantly.

"Don't you dare pass out! You're supposed to be the monster here - the monster of the piece doesn't get to faint into their soup in a fit of remorse."

Knuckles gaped at him, blind-sided by the abrupt change in the tone of the conversation. Again he was reminded of Sonic – specifically, of the way the hedgehog's mercurial moods made his head ache.

The brown furred echidna made swift eye contact with several of those who'd stopped eating their meal to listen then turned back to Knuckles.

"Well if you're not going to apologise for everything every other guardian has ever done, then the least you could do is say sorry for turning up out of the blue and terrifying the hell out of everyone."

Knuckles floundered.

"That is not what I intended. I am sorry." That was a fact as much as an apology but it seemed to pass muster.

"Good."

"But I don't know anything about what happened here, about the the guardians before me. If it's true-"

"If?" It was a shout and Knuckles jumped and broke off.

"It's true. There are records and my grandfather's grandfather's father," he ticked the generations off on one hand, "remembers the last time they came for the children."

After a moment Knuckles looked up helplessly. "And what can I do about that?" He stared at his hands. "Even if your people had left me the means to open my own veins and make an end of myself it wouldn't change it."

"No. They did what the controller made them do. And so did you. It's an evil thing."

Knuckles lowered his eyes.

He heard the other echidna sigh.

"Look - I didn't bring you water. To be honest I thought it'd be safest if you just died quietly. I'm as chaos insensitive as they come - if someone got saddled with instant guardianship it was never going to be me. But I like Mazi and she talks sense. And I heard all the children's stories growing up, about mean monsters being made meaner by people being mean _to_ them until they turn incandescent and go on a rampage. Best all round if we avoid that."

He shoved Knuckles, reasonably gently, on his least injured shoulder.

"Hey?"

Knuckles made himself make eye contact and nodded minutely, afraid to let himself feel the relief that threatened.

"Good. I'm Tam. Consider me at least an attempt at a friend."

Knuckles mastered the urge to drop his gaze. "I've been told I don't know what that is."

"Well," Tam said, "We'll see."


	13. 12 Finding a Way

Sonic leaned over the side of the open cockpit as Tails flew low over the jungle. It certainly looked impenetrable from here, whatever his confident words to Amy back on the Island. He sat back as Tails banked around at the edge, aiming for the long causeway that cut across the marsh which the jungle eventually turned into at the nearest edge. A village sprawled half in, half out of the wetland on one side and the jungle on the other.

The Tornado touched down lightly, riding high and rough over the tuffets of springy, weedy grass. Sonic was out almost before it had come to a stop.

"Listen out" he called to Tails who nodded and raised his hand in a wave. "I'll call on the radio."

Tails lowered his hand and turned the aircraft around, accelerating down the improvised landing strip and quickly airborne again. He was heading back to his equipment, hoping to be able to radio some semblance of directions if Sonic strayed from the paths or found them gone.

Sonic turned his attention to the village and found he already had an audience.

A mixed group of frogs, a crocodile and three moor-hens watched him curiously.

"You always travel that way?" asked one of the frogs. "'S quite the arrival."

Sonic shrugged. "Nope. Mostly I prefer my feet. Can't get everywhere on them though. I'm looking for a friend of mine. Anyone new come through recently?"

The group conferred and the same frog answered. "Not that I heard anything of, but come on into the square and ask around, for sure."

Sonic followed them. The village was small enough that word spread quickly. The people were friendly, open and curious but not well travelled and had mostly been spared from Robotnik's attentions. Sonic waited for information with what patience he could, killing time by strolling around looking at the village. It was a pity - he could tell it would normally be a good place to kick back and relax - warm, comfortable if a bit damp underfoot on the swamp side.

Before he'd grown restless enough to give up, another frog - not one of his welcoming committee hurried over. He stuck out his hand and Sonic shook it.

"Broga's the name. I set a traveller back on the path... oh... I don't know. A week and some ago. Ten days? A dozen? Somewhat like that. Going into the jungle up the old river route he was. Didn't know there was much left there myself but he seemed certain enough."

Sonic pulled out the photograph his heart racing, "Was this him?"

Broga blinked his large round eyes. "Yup. Sure enough."

"Was he okay?"

Broga nodded. "Sure. Bit bedraggled for being lost is all."

Sonic beamed with relief, not even the prospect of having to take the 'river route' after all enough to bring him down.

"I need to follow him. Is there someone who can take a boat up there? Or is there a path?" He added the latter more with hope than any real confidence and Broga shook his head at once.

"No path. Been a while since anyone took a boat either but I don't mind, if you don't mind that it'll be nothing but a coracle and the lady wife doesn't mind that it'll be a two day trip each way."

Without any clear notion of what a coracle might be Sonic had already agreed only to baulk at the sight of the little round bowl of a boat which Broga shortly returned with.

The frog patted him reassuring on the shoulder obviously noting his alarm. "Not to worry. Even my smallest boy can handle one of these and it's a smooth old river for all we'll have some hard paddling to do upstream."

Sonic gritted his teeth and followed Broga the half mile to the river. A small jetty - or at least the partly destroyed posts of one stood barely recognisable, showing how long it had been since the river was used regularly for trading or travel.

Broga stepped into the boat first, steadying it with the oar in one hand and reached his other out to help Sonic in.

Sonic sat unhappily, rigidly, crouched forward far enough to hold onto both edges.

"How deep is it here?" he asked, hoping he sounded merely conversational.

Broga shrugged. "Shallow where it meets the marsh. Deeper further up."

Sonic grimaced and tightened his grip as the frog punted them out into the current. The boat turned slightly and for a moment drifted backwards before Broga applied himself to the paddle and they started moving slowly upstream.

* * *

Knuckles had trimmed the oil lamp and turned it low before sleeping this time and it still burned dimly when he woke. How long had it been since he'd last woken naturally? He tried to count the days he'd spent in the village but could only estimate. He got up slowly and filled the water cup. He drained it twice sitting on the edge of the bed while deciding what to do. He was hungry and had no idea how far through the day it was. He also needed fresh supplies of the medicinal herbs, most of the cuts were starting to heal but the deeper ones - and his hands needed fresh dressings. He'd have to ask someone.

He walked slowly to the door and hesitated. He had to force himself to open it. Force himself to walk rather than creep or run. He felt horribly exposed but met no one in the passageways. The dining cavern was empty, bowls and platters stacked away. He turned back. He didn't know the way outside but he was as at home underground as on the surface and it wasn't hard to follow the fresh air.

He hesitated again at the wide opening that led to the square. There were a lot of people were out there. He edged out, staying close to the edge of the square, keeping his head down while trying to look around at the same time for any familiar face, or failing that anyone who didn't look too appalled at the sight of him and might answer him. The sun was high, it was past noon, he must have slept like a stone. Scents from the jungle flooded his senses. It had been so long since he was in a state to notice anything but his own condition. Smells of wet undergrowth, small fires, recently turned earth and overlaid, a pungent smell which meant he could maybe find the medicinal plants without help. If he was allowed to pick them.

He followed his nose. There was a herb garden of sorts though it spilled back into the jungle itself, contained by a low wall on only two of the three sides. He could see what he needed and looked around again for someone to ask permission of. He saw Olec approaching and wondered if someone had told him he was there.

Olec looked at him and didn't wait to be asked a question.

"The gardens are for everyone to use and everyone contributes to their upkeep. Weed the garden then take what you need. I have something to show you once you're done."

Knuckles nodded, decided against asking what, and bent to the task as Olec walked away. The patch was well kept already and the job was not hard but he was still hot and bothered and shaking with fatigue by the time he finished - clearly he wasn't as recovered as he'd felt upon first waking up. Wearily he picked the supplies he wanted and headed for the entranceway to the tunnels.

People were staring at him but it wasn't until Tam intercepted him that he realised it was anything other than routine suspicion.

"You can't traipse inside in that stinking mess. Don't guardians wash? Get yourself cleaned up." Tam pulled him away from the entrance.

Knuckles lifted his head. "Where?"

"Come on." Tam gave him a tug in the right direction and walked beside him as the crossed a low ridge, behind the tunnel complex and down to a narrow, deep stream. Knuckles sat on the edge then slid in, holding onto the bank, not trusting himself to the current just yet. The cool water was pleasant and the fast flowing steam certainly washed the mud and sweat away effectively but he chilled quickly and found he needed Tam's help to climb back out.

"Better?" Tam asked as Knuckles panted in the sunshine, as glad of the warmth as he'd been of the cool water.

"Yes." Knuckles said. "Thank you."

Tam shrugged. "See you later." And he left leaving Knuckles unsure if he was relieved or disappointed to be alone again.

Knuckles walked slowly back to the tunnels and down into his room. The bandages were wet and some of the scabs had softened and split in the water. He reapplied the plant dressings and dry bandages, draping the wet ones over the back of a chair. He wondered if he ought to try and find Olec or if the old echidna had meant to meet him here.

If he wasn't wanted right away it might be nice to be back outside. Would it be better to let people see him and get used to the idea he was there or stay out of sight until they had?

Before he'd decided there was a knock at the door. He crossed the room as quickly as possible to open it and Olec stood there.

"This way," he said, starting back down the passage. Knuckles followed.

"You've been talking to Tam," he remarked.

"Yes." Knuckles sought for more than a one word answer. "He seems... good."

"Hmm." There was almost amusement in the sound Olec made. "Most people would say 'impulsive, cocky and flippant' but, yes, his heart is honest enough. You could have worse advocates." They walked in silence another few paces. "Did he tell you _why_ people here feel as they do about guardians?"

"Yes." This time Knuckles failed to come up with anything to add to his answer. All he could think of to follow up with were demands for proof or denial that it was anything to do with him personally, both of which were far too likely to be taken for belligerence.

"Do you believe it?"

Knuckles almost froze, made himself keep walking. Did he? It was clear the echidnas here did. Every bit of anger and fear and disgust was all too obviously genuine. They weren't irrational, weren't simply deranged and taking pleasure in his distress. On some level it made perfect sense to treat him as a danger. Regardless of whether the Master Emerald was, as they believed, inherently evil, the sheer power of it meant it was almost inevitably corrupting.

The difference was that he'd always believed that there _was_ an 'almost' and that he was it. That if he kept faith, held his ground and his will that he could keep it safe without being corrupted by it himself. That that's what being a guardian _was_ \- and he'd thought himself the last of a long line of others who'd achieved just that. Was that belief nothing but ego and self delusion? Was his lineage actually that of a horde of rampaging tyrants who'd used the Master Emerald for their own ends? Or, even if they hadn't begun that way, had been turned to such behaviour by the Master itself?

What did he know for certain?

He knew for certain now that his memory was an unreliable guide. He knew he was older than he appeared, or remembered being unless he concentrated hard. He knew then that the Master Emerald could alter how he saw the world, what he remembered, what he focussed on or overlooked.

He'd already known that emotion and mood reflected back and forth between the Master - any Chaos energy really - and anyone who used it, and he knew from experience that was more likely to be negative than positive. Sonic was insanely lethal when over-exposed to it, and Shadow, steeped in it from the moment of his creation was dangerously unpredictable. Knuckles had believed that being a guardian gave him some sort of protection from that darker aspect but what if he was wrong?

Sonic teased him often about his temper or moodiness and he'd brushed him off, dismissing it as a result of living never knowing when the next attack would come. But what if it was deeper, a side effect of living in the shadow of the Master?

They'd reached another door and Knuckles still hadn't answered.

"I don't know," he said and it was the truth.

Olec opened the door. "It is hard to find a different answer than the one you went looking for."

"I suppose so." Knuckles looked around the room. It reminded him of the records caverns on the Island, except there were bound books instead of scrolls and glassed-in lanterns flickered here and there instead of oil lamps. Once, the sight would have excited him beyond measure, information at last, actual answers maybe, but there was nothing.

"What did Tam tell you?" Olec asked as he pulled down several volumes.

"That the guardians took children to make them into guardians. That the ones who didn't become guardians were killed. That-"

Olec cut him off. "That will do to start. It's probably the first thing that comes to most people's mind. The deepest injury." He opened one of the books, laid it on a table. "Look."

Knuckles moved closer and Olec stepped out of the way of the lantern's light.

The page was divided by dates, most about a year apart, others closer or further away.

Beneath the dates were lists of names. Sometimes only one, sometimes as many as half a dozen.

Taya 9  
Izel 14  
Koled 5  
Egg of Etal and Zaia

The names there in fading ink on yellowing pages made it real somehow in a way not even the fervent belief of the people around him had.

Occasionally a name had a symbol inked beside it. A little crescent on its side. It was easy to guess what it meant.

"These ones with the mark became guardians?"

"Yes. They marked the ones who became guardians that way."

Knuckles only realised his hand had gone to the half-moon of white fur on his own chest when Olec continued.

"As they did you."

Knuckles pushed his fingers deeper into his fur. The skin was rougher there, but he'd always thought it was a birthmark, or part of his natural colouring. Not a scar. Not something that had been done _to_ him, maybe against his will. He pulled his hand away.

"Curaca said they exposed the children to the Master Em- to the controller. Tam said that some of them were killed."

"By the process not the guardians directly, though most rightly consider the difference insignificant." Olec took down another book. "This is as much as we know. It's a fragmented account from different sources. No system is infallible and there was the occasional selectee who escaped and was able to tell some of what happened. One guardian we know of who abandoned the role, though he was half out of his mind by the time he arrived here. As I say, the accounts are fragmented."

Olec stepped away from the table. "You may spend as much time as you wish here to satisfy yourself as to the truthfulness of what we have told you."

Knuckles nodded silently.

"I will see you at the evening meal if you have any questions about what you have read."

Knuckles nodded again and Olec left.

For a long time he could only stare at the books, the letters meaningless before his eyes, unable to resolve the information into anything he could take in. After a while he flicked through, looking for the end of the list of names. Tam had said the guardians stopped coming in his grandfather's grandfather's father's time.

The last quarter of the book was empty and he flipped back to the last list. One name - Ankai and an egg of Cenda and Zafi had been taken. Neither were marked with the little crescent. Because the guardians had stopped coming? No one knew which, if either had been made a guardian? He stared at the names then sighed and pushed the book aside to reach for the other one.

He stopped reading when his stomach complained and his head was aching. He felt heavy and slow, as though what he'd learned had physically weighed him down. He wanted to sleep, but his mind was racing and he was hungry.

He put the books back in the gaps on the shelves and plodded to the dining cavern. Olec was there but Knuckles found he couldn't muster the energy to ask him anything at all. Tam was sitting with a group on the other side of the hall, engaged in animated conversation.

Knuckles ate silently and returned to his room, plunging almost instantly into sleep.

He woke some time later, heart racing adrenaline fast, fingers clutched in the white fur crescent. He couldn't remember the nightmare, if it had been a nightmare, but sat up and reached for the water cup. He felt wide awake and wondered whether it would look suspicious if he went outside for some air. He paced around the room once and stared at the door. His boots had been returned and stood beside it, but when he eventually decided to open it he padded out barefoot.

No one else was stirring and the passageway lights had been trimmed for the night. He could smell the cool damp night air well before he reached the entranceway which stood open and unguarded. He went only a few paces out and sat on a tree-stump - part of a work in progress enlargement of the square.

He'd slept longer than he thought, there was a trace of light in the eastern sky, it couldn't be long until dawn.

He wished he had any hope that a new day would shed any more metaphorical light on his situation. He no longer doubted the claims of the village echidnas about the guardians, but couldn't manage to fit himself into it somehow. Was one of the names on one of the lists his? Or was he one of the anonymous ones? Not even a name. "Egg of" someone or other with not even a few years of family life away from the Floating Island to remember?

He sighed, head in his hands, and when he next looked up the sunrise was already over.


	14. 13 On the Path

If Sonic had hoped that two days on the river would let him become in some way acclimatised to the proximity of the water then the way his legs shook as he crawled out onto the bank cured him of the idea.

"Up you come!" A large female alligator hauled him back to his feet. "Not a sailor, eh? Not to worry."

Broga meanwhile had sprang from the boat to the bank and lifted the coracle clear of the water, resting it upside down a few paces from the water's edge. He stuck out a hand to the alligator and introductions were made.

Sonic cut straight to it, ignoring his still distinctly queasy stomach. "Good to meet you, Dani, I'm looking for a friend who might have come through here. Sometime between a week and two weeks ago?"

The alligator's jaw opened in a broad smile.

"Red echidna?"

"Yes!" Sonic grinned back - progress at last! - before realising exactly what she had said. If he'd ever met anyone before who'd recognised Knuckles' species he couldn't remember it.

"Is he here?" Could it be that easy?

"Na. Just stayed the one night, picked up supplies then went on."

"Do you know which way?"

Dani pulled her long nose into her chest and looked down her nose at him. "There's only one way the echidnas who come through here ever go."

"Echidnas?" Sonic repeated the plural. Knuckles had been so certain he was the only one left. No wonder he'd come here if he'd had anything like evidence that he wasn't.

"Yeah, I know," Dani seemed unsurprised by his surprise. "They're all gone, right? Except they're not - not quite. There's a village a few days hike in. Dribs and drabs of them turn up every so often looking for it. No one seems too clear on what happened to scatter 'em like that but they always come because they thought it was just them left."

She looked across the village. "Should be Madvel doing the storytelling but he's off trading. He's talked to more of them than the rest of us. He's the only one who's seen the village itself. They don't trade much. Got a bit of a self-sufficiency craze I hear."

"Tell me about it," Sonic muttered. "But he was okay, was he?"

"Fighting fit," Dani grinned and Sonic found himself caught between relief and annoyance. If they'd all been in such a state of stress and upset just because that damn rock was throwing a tizzy over Knuckles taking a damn holiday he was going to hit him sick for not warning them.

"I need to go after him," was all he said aloud though. "How's the path?"

Dani shrugged. "It's been a while. The start of it's pretty clear, we go fruit picking down there a bit of the way."

"Well, thanks." Sonic turned to leave. There was still half the day left and he was positively itching to run by now.

Dani looked mildly taken aback at the fleetingness of his stop but smiled. "Good luck."

Sonic waved and accelerated out of the village.

It _was_ good to run and he sped up until it took all of his concentration to follow the path and avoid the occasional obstructions, fallen branches, intruding undergrowth, loose rocks. All his concentration. None to spare for anger or worry or wondering. Just run. Miss that branch, duck that one, jump that one, feet thundering on the cobbles, then on the beaten earth where the path became track became trace. Skidding round bends keeping his footing by sheer momentum. Breath quickening, body warming even as the wind on his face was cooling. This was what he was better at than plodding searches.

Sonic ran.

* * *

Knuckles was picking stones out of the recently dug over patch of ground that was going to be a new vegetable patch. It was repetitive work that made his back ache and his mind wander. Currently he was turning over the problem of supplies. He'd been shown the records that proved the guardians had been supplied from the villages - this one and the others, now gone. Lists of produce, collected or grown. But even without that if he thought about it, _really_ thought about it - step by logical step as he had backtracked through the impossible list of winters he remembered - then it became stupidly obvious that it had to be true.

He supported himself on the Island by foraging, but even here in a smallish village where the hunters and gatherers ranged many miles they still needed a certain amount of cultivation to get by. He'd seen the size of the ruined cities on the Island. The extent of the desert and volcanic slopes. The jungles were fertile enough and in some areas fruit trees or other edible plants grew in isolation but they were the exception. There were no plains of arable land or fruit orchards or farms. The Floating Island, when it had been fully populated could never have supported as many people as the buildings testified to having lived there. There were bringing supplies in. Had to have been. Why had he never wondered where from?

The bucket he'd been dumping the stones in was full and he picked it up and dragged it over to a growing pile at the edge of the square. They'd be used for lining fire-pits, or drainage ditches or something else in due course.

He went back to the patch, stretching his back out as he walked. Weariness still bit quickly, and he'd been working one handed - the arm in the sling cramping fiercely now. Experimentally he removed the sling and stretched out his arm. He winced, unable to decide whether the ache felt better or worse than the cramp. He was worried it was healing badly and decided to leave the sling for the moment and see what range of movement he had. He scanned the ground looking for the point he'd left off then crouched down, feeling for the stones which had been turned up to the surface of the dark, rich soil.

"Looks better," Tam's voice and Knuckles looked up with a start. "Less like a rubble pit, more like somewhere that might actually grow something."

"Yes." Knuckles answered though he was suddenly uneasy and unsure why. Because Tam had surprised him? He was still humiliatingly jumpy and hated it in himself. No one had touched him since the trial had ended but it seemed this fact had no sway over his reflexes so all he could do was hide it as best he could.

Tam stood over him. _No_ , Knuckles corrected himself. That was just timidity too. Tam stood _next_ to him. Tam was standing while he was on his knees and Tam was taller anyway. That was all. But uneasiness gnawed at him anyway. There was something unsettling, something that made a part of him instinctively stray to thoughts of the controller. He pulled his thoughts firmly away but there was still... something... Not Tam at all. Something else.

Unsettling. Familiar. Not exactly threatening but intrusive.

He shook his head to clear it. His only thought was that it might be something happening on the Floating Island. He didn't want to even give that a thought. Didn't want to think about having to make a decision about it if that was the case.

He reached for another stone, hearing Tam making some random comment about the expected weather or the evening meal.

Something _was_ wrong. Abruptly there was a commotion at the other edge of the square, raised voices and it was all Knuckles could do not to cringe there in the mud even though he didn't see how it could possibly be anything to do with him. Tam had broken off and was staring across the square where Shaski had stamped his way to the front of a small crowd who were confronting...

Knuckles' jaw dropped open, mind momentarily freezing up completely, unable to process what he was seeing, so out of context here so loud and confident and fizzing with that disruptive sparky energy that explained in an instant why he'd thought at once of the Emerald, of an intruder who was too familiar to quite feel a intruder and whose own loose, erratic connection with the chaos energies was so totally recognisable to Knuckles' constant awareness but so wrong and out of place here.

The blue hedgehog had a mulish expression on his face and was squaring up to Shaski notwithstanding the height difference between them.

Knuckles was barely aware of the name leaving his mouth.

"Sonic!"


	15. 14 Incoming Hedgehog

Sonic never remembered making decisions when he ran. He moved on pure instinct, too fast for deliberate thought. So it was only after he skidded to a stop that he realised he'd noticed the change up ahead. The trees thinned and stopped and voices carried through the evening air. There was no threat in the tone, no one had heard or seen him coming or if they had were unconcerned. He walked to the break in the tree-line, watched a moment from over a low bank of undergrowth.

It didn't look much of a village. Open-sided shacks bordered a clearing with a fire-pit running along one edge and gardens or maybe vegetable patches along another. On the opposite of the clearing to Sonic a steeply sloping tunnel entrance was edged by fancy stonework. Was this the right terrain for caves? He shrugged, the people were in any case far more interesting because they were, as Dani had told him, all echidnas. They were tall, well fed and broad-shouldered, the village was clearly thriving, small though it was.

Sonic pushed his way through the undergrowth into the clearing, looking for any sign of Knuckles among those wandering or working. There were several red or reddish furred echidnas visible but all were too big by some way. Not for the first time he realised how little he knew about his friend. Looking at this lot he wondered if Knuckles was even fully grown by echidna standards.

Before he'd gone more than a few steps he spotted a russet furred echidna striding, almost running, towards him.

Sonic stopped, smiling and waving.

"Hiya, sorry for barging in unannounced, I was just..."

Sonic broke off and frowned as the echidna dropped his hand to a broad knife in a leather belt around his waist.

"I'm not looking for trouble." Sonic assured him. "I'm looking for a friend of mine who may have come here. He's an echidna. Red fur. His name's-"

"What's _your_ name?" the echidna raised his voice over Sonic's without removing his hand from the knife.

Sonic eyed the weapon, still smiling but ready to move in a split second if he needed to. "Sonic."

"I am Shaski, and there are no friends of yours here, Sonic. Leave."

Sonic raised his eyebrows. "Well that's pretty definite. Psychic are we?"

Shaski drew the knife and repeated himself. "Leave."

Sonic gave a huge fake yawn. "Don't kid yourself, pal. Bigger and uglier than you have tried."

Shaski raised the knife but while he and Sonic were still assessing one another they were both diverted by a startled shout from across the square.

"Sonic?" A smaller echidna, working at the edge of an empty vegetable patch surged unsteadily to his feet. Sonic's jaw fell open at the belated realisation it was Knuckles.

Knuckles looked no less confused but before he'd got another word out the nearest echidna backhanded him with such force that he turned a complete somersault before landing full length on the recently dug ground.

Sonic's shock lasted only a second and he tensed, preparing to join the instant uproar and affray that would surely follow the moment Knuckles regained his feet and attacked.

Except he didn't. He did nothing but clamber slowly back to his knees, wipe the blood from his muzzle with the back of his wrist and look up - first at the one who'd hit him then at Shaski.

Shaski looked from Knuckles to his assailant. He made a patting motion in mid air, recognisably a 'calm it down' gesture. Knuckles sagged slightly where he knelt, apparently reassured. The other echidna shifted uncomfortably, with anger and something like shock still on his face.

"He startled me," he said roughly.

"It's all right. Fetch Curaca."

The other echidna moved off rapidly, looking glad to go. Knuckles' gaze followed him out of sight.

Sonic was off balance, confused and full of thwarted nervous energy.

"Knuckles?" he asked.

Not a flicker of a response.

Sonic glared at the russet echidna.

"Let him go! What have you done to him? What's going on?" A muddle of furious questions only half formed spilled out, his mind racing. If Knuckles had come straight here from Big River it had been over a week. Almost ten days. Had he been here all that time? How long, how many blows like that, had it taken to quell any and all resistance or retaliation?

"Knuckles!" He shouted it this time, but got no more response.

Shaski was watching Sonic not Knuckles, knife still in his hand. "What concern of yours is this guardian ?"

There was something in the way he said 'guardian' that put Sonic's back up – a barely contained contempt, as though the very word was offensive.

"He's my friend." Sonic answered instantly, belligerently, taking an unthinking two steps forward in spite of the fact it , not meant he had to look up that much further at the echidna who topped his height by a good head and a half, without even considering his bulk.

The echidna held his ground, though he made no overt aggressive move.

"His kind don't have friends."

" _His kind_?" Sonic repeated incredulously. "What exactly is that supposed to mean – ' _his kind_ '?"

"You know what he is." The mingled anger and disgust on the echidna's face was obviously genuine but completely baffling. Sonic shook his head.

"Yes - you know. I can smell the perverted power he wields on you as well."

Sonic frowned as a tall female echidna joined them. Presumably the summoned Curaca.

"This is... about the Emeralds?" Sonic added the plural hesitantly, not sure how much they knew or speculated.

Both echidnas' expressions tightened at the word and and several more within earshot spat on the ground.

Sonic shook his head. "Then you've got it wrong. Knuckles barely ever uses it, he keeps it safe, keeps anyone from using it, it's practically all he goes on about..."

Curaca was shaking her head before Sonic had finished.

"The marks of its corruption are on him. Stunted, mutated, his very self eaten away, barely even aware of who he is."

Sonic gaped, sought frantically for a counterargument and went with, "And that's reason to knock him senseless just for being surprised to see me is it?" It sounded weak even to his own ears and the echidnas ignored it.

"The guardians were traitors and cowards and enemies of our people, and this one, the last one, knows this to be true. He does not resist his penance as you have already seen."

Curaca looked Sonic up and down.

"He has told us who you are - Sonic. That your presence has made him forget himself is only further proof of the corrupting influence of the chaos energies. You are only permitted to stand there with the taint of having used them yourself because you are not one of us. Not our responsibility."

"And Knuckles is?" Sonic said, playing for time as he cast his eyes around the village. Knuckles still knelt at the edge of the vegetable patch, his head lowered, looking at the ground, motionless, listening. Tense and flushed.

"Yes."

Sonic had almost forgotten what he'd asked, too taken up with working out if he could tackle them all and get Knuckles out of there without further injury. With little false modesty he rated his chances fairly well – but would Knuckles come with him?

The instant the thought crossed his mind Sonic dismissed it. Tried to. Of course he'd come. Except he'd been so unresponsive to the blow, except he looked so anxious now, except he didn't protest a single word of the slurs cast at him.

As long as Sonic had known him he'd been quick to anger at the slight hint of an insult to his honour, his Emerald or his fighting prowess. This mute tolerance, almost obliviousness, was unrecognisable.

Sonic backed off a step, wrong-footed, and uncertain.

"Let me talk to him."

"No. I see no reason to expose him to the residual chaos you carry." Her expression softened just for a moment. "I understand why you've come. He told us of you, Sonic, but he doesn't even know how to call you friend."

Sonic stared at her, nonplussed by what sounded like a total tangent.

"Like that ever mattered!" He set his jaw. "I'm not leaving without him. Not until I hear it from him."

Curaca regarded him a moment longer.

"I suspect that anything the guardian says will be insufficient to convince you. However – as you wish."

She jerked her hand in a peremptory gesture and Knuckles must have been watching the exchange after all because he rose and half ran over to them. Sonic watched him sharply. His moments were stiff and awkward in spite of his haste. He was injured, or recently healed maybe. Still hurting in either case and Sonic's scowl deepened.

Knuckles met no one's eyes as he came to a stop, least of all Sonic's – he faced the two echidnas, his back half turned to the hedgehog, shoulders slumped, arms crossed tightly across his chest and his hands tucked into his armpits. He looked exhausted, looked as though he wanted nothing more than to make himself small enough to disappear there in plain sight.

"Curaca."

Sonic still couldn't tell if the word was a name or a title but the female echidna responded.

"This... individual... would speak to you. Would have you leave with him if he could."

Knuckles didn't seem to feel this required a response.

"Do you have anything to say?"

A tiny headshake.

"Knuckles, please! Talk to _me_." Sonic heard a note of pleading creep into his voice.

Knuckles looked up, then. Briefly. A mere flinch of a glance, but he did finally speak.

"I did not ask you to come here, Sonic. I want nothing from you. Please leave."

Sonic would have protested, but he recognised in that stilted formality the effort of self control it had cost.

He would make it no harder, but he would not be leaving alone.

But now was not the moment. He watched Knuckles and the other echidnas a moment longer, then turned and walked out of the village. Refusing to check over his shoulder as he did so. Let them wonder.

* * *

Knuckles closed his eyes to avoid having to choose between looking at the retreating hedgehog or the watching echidnas. He felt shaky, unsteady on his feet. Shock or weariness or fear of Shaski and Curaca' reactions. Or all three.

"You said no one would follow you." Shaski's tone was even, tightly controlled and sent Knuckles' breath and pulse racing anyway. "You said you had prevented anyone from finding out where you'd gone."

"I thought I had." It was a whisper. Breathless. "I was wrong. I'm sorry. Please..."

The 'please' had slipped out unplanned. He wasn't even sure what he was asking. To be believed? To not be hurt? To be forgiven?

Curaca touched Shaski's shoulder and he moved aside. She spoke instead.

"Do you think he has really left?"

Knuckles tried to bring his breathing under control. The answer they wanted to hear was 'yes'. The truth was 'no'. Sonic never gave up that easily. He'd be back.

Knuckles wanted to lie, wanted to believe the lie, wanted Sonic safely gone from here.

"No!" The word was hard to force out and it came as a gasp. Instantly he wanted to take it back. "I don't know. Don't hurt him. Not because of me. Please!"

"Why?" Curaca voice was suddenly hard and sharp but softened in what sounded like genuine curiosity the moment she had Knuckles' full, startled attention on her face. "Why does a guardian care what happens to a hedgehog?"

That was obvious wasn't it? Knuckles frowned. "He only came here because of me. If anything happens to him because of me, it's my fault." And there was enough already set to his account. More than enough.

"You gave your word to stay in this village and bring no harm to it." Curaca paused, waiting until Knuckles met her eyes before continuing. "You have brought this hedgehog. He's your responsibility to deal with. If you make him ours we will end it. Do you understand?"

"Yes."

Did he? He wasn't sure but without another word Curaca turned and walked away, Shaski speaking urgently to her all the while, though Knuckles couldn't make out the words.

He watched them go then sank down on the spot. Sonic would come back, probably at dark and he would have to find some way to make him leave. He should find Tam as well. Explain. He'd frightened him badly leaping up like that, no wonder he'd lashed out.

The new vegetable plot stood half finished though the sun was sinking fast now. Dinner would be being prepared. He had no appetite. How much of his tentative cautious progress here had been undone today? He rose and stepped slowly over to the patch of dug earth, aware of eyes upon him as people headed underground with the lowering sun.

He worked by touch and the dim light of the overnight fire until he was dropping then moved to the entranceway but didn't go down. Instead he sat, leaning against the upright marker stone. Watching the fringes of the village.

Waiting.


	16. 15 Come Away

Sonic ran far enough to be sure of not being followed and waited. An hour before dawn, by his best estimate he was back at the boundary of the village. Any guards would be at their sleepiest he figured. Killing time, waiting for their shift to end. But to his mild surprise the village appeared to mount no patrol or guard. He ran lightly and confidently into the village square, looking keenly around in the last of the moonlight that filtered through the canopy.

He'd expected to have to break in to search but he saw Knuckles almost immediately. Unrestrained, and unwatched, simply curled on the ground in the lee of one of the imposing stones that marked the tunnel entrance.

Sheer arrogance from his captors, Sonic wondered. Or simply utter confidence that he wouldn't run.

He moved silently over to him. Knuckles didn't stir and that in itself was unusual.

"Knuckles." Sonic touched his shoulder, lightly then more insistently. "C'mon. Knux."

Knuckles' eyes flew open and he rolled away. He froze, halfway to his feet and stayed there, crouched and staring. A motionless, silent silhouette.

For a moment Sonic was silent too, unable to shake the impression that this was less a rescue than an exercise in persuasion.

Before he had worked out how to start, Knuckles was shaking his head. A tiny, frantic movement.

"Go away," he whispered. "I knew you'd come back. I stayed out here. So you wouldn't come looking. Go away. I didn't ask you to come here. Go away."

"Knuckles..." Sonic was whispering too. This wasn't the time or place for a debate! "Just listen for a minute. Just think. Just for a minute. Talk to me. Tell me what's going on. Explain."

"You don't understand."

"Too right," Sonic agreed readily. "But you can explain, yeah? Only not here. Somewhere safe." He crouched down to be more at eye level and reached out. Beckoned minutely "Come on. Somewhere safe, yeah? Come on."

Knuckles hesitated, still shaking his head, slowly now, almost as though he was unaware of doing it.

"I can not go with you." His words were slow, the strained formality back in his tone, his self control ragged and close to tearing. "Please, Sonic. Leave."

"Can't." Sonic shrugged. He stood up. "You know I can't, right? You wouldn't - would you? If you thought I was in trouble?"

Knuckles looked away. "If you told me to."

Sonic shook his head. "Liar."

Not even that provoked a reaction and Sonic sighed and stepped forward to pull Knuckles to his feet. "Come on now."

They'd forgotten about whispering already but as Sonic's hand closed around Knuckles' arm he yelled aloud.

"Don't!"

The shout echoed in the tunnel entrance and Sonic snatched his hand back as though burned. There was a moment's frozen pause while they both waited to see if anyone had heard.

"Dammit!" Sonic muttered. "Come on!"

Knuckles stood stock still, his opposite hand cupped around his arm where Sonic had grabbed him. He showed no signs of moving and Sonic made a snap decision.

"Sorry!" he said.

Knuckles' expression was unreadable. "It doesn't matter."

Sonic winced. "I think you're going to think it does."

Sonic crouched in readiness then leapt in a spindash.

He barrelled into Knuckles with enough force to knock him cold.

"Sorry!" he said again before scooping him up in a fireman's carry and running for it.

Even encumbered with the unconscious echidna he moved fast through the clear paths he'd searched earlier and didn't stop until Knuckles was starting to stir. That was longer that it should have been, and Sonic almost stopped to check several times. Head injuries were dangerous, and solid though Knuckles' skull undoubtedly was, he'd been completely flattened from zero range - twice - and Sonic was worried. But what could he do if he'd got it wrong? If they got caught now he suspected they'd both get worse than a bang on the head and he'd could barely see to get through the jungle as it was, they needed all the lead they could get.

By the time sunrise came Sonic felt certain he had several hours' start at least. He slid Knuckles to the ground in the next clearing and stared at him in the grey dawn, wishing he could put the ashen colour of his muzzle down to the unflattering light. His jaw was swollen where the other echidna had hit him and an ugly birds-egg bruise was forming on his head where Sonic had. And there was something more wrong than the recent injuries. Sonic had seen Knuckles banged up after a fight any number of times, seen him dishevelled and bedraggled after crawling through tunnels or stamping around in the wild weather of the Floating Island. Even knocked out cold, Knuckles had always had an odd sort of vitality. A _presence_ that was maybe just a reflection of Sonic's own dimmer sense of chaos energy. But whatever it was it was missing and Sonic had to fight the urge to check that Knuckles was even still breathing.

He crouched down at his shoulder.

"Knuckles?"

No answer.

Sonic sighed. Where did he even start? Amy'd insisted he bring supplies and at least basic first aid stuff along so maybe there was something he could do, if he even knew what the matter was. He looked more closely.

Head - badly bruised, jaw likewise. He'd nothing for that. Or for what seemed to be many missing spines. Fur dull, staring, matted in places. Could be anything, illness, dehydration, general poor living conditions and food. He'd nothing for that either. One shoulder badly swollen, maybe dislocated, maybe a half healed break, probably needed a sling. He could do that. Arms and legs otherwise fine, though the fur was chafed to the skin at wrists and ankles.

He was wearing his boots, though his gloves were missing and hands instead wrapped heavily in grubby bandages. Sonic fished clean ones from his supplies and unwound the first set. He stopped before he was half finished, staring at the remaining bandage. He felt uneasy all of a sudden. There were two red-brown stains on the fabric and it was smooth and tight and flush against the back of Knuckles' hand. It took gritted teeth to remove the rest of the bandage because it did need changing but Sonic's gorge rose at the sight. The injuries had clotted over but not enough to entirely hide what had been done.

Sonic made himself look. The wounds were clean although the bandages weren't anymore, that was something. There was no sign of infection. He rebound them with clean supplies from his pack and sat back, swearing to himself.

After a moment to calm down, Sonic ran his fingers cautiously through the more matted patches of Knuckles' fur, unsurprised by now to find scabs beneath, but appalled by the number. Nothing was still bleeding though, even when one or two clots came away at his touch. Even unconscious, Knuckles flinched as Sonic reached the base of his ribs, pressing carefully, afraid of finding broken bones but instead discovering a ragged wound as long as his hand. Like the others it was already half healed but it was hard to believe it had been survivable out here with such low tech, if any, treatment.

This must be what Tails' readings had picked up - the Master Emerald pouring everything it had into keeping its guardian alive. Had Knuckles finally found the limits of its power then? Was that why he hadn't used it to escape? Hadn't fought back? And why in the wide world had other echidnas, of all people, attacked him in the first place?

Not only attacked him - Sonic tried to work it through logically - imprisoned him - and carried on injuring him even after that. Most of the injuries, even the missing spines, _could_ be explained by an almighty straight up fight but not what they'd done to his hands. For someone to have systematically cut or torn or whatever the hell they'd done to his claws, Knuckles must have been more helpless than Sonic could readily bring himself to believe. And someone had gone on hurting him anyway.

It was all Sonic could do to stop himself racing back to the village himself and breaking a few heads.

Had they wanted the Master Emerald? If so, Knuckles hadn't told them where it was because no attack had come.

Sonic frowned. Or hadn't when he'd left. He'd have heard. Wouldn't he? Suddenly doubtful he grabbed for the radio.

"Amy?"

"Sonic! Go ahead. Did you find him?"

Sonic sagged with relief. "Yeah. Yeah, I did, but he's-" How in the world could he sum it up?

"Hurt," he finished. "Is everything okay up there?"

"All quiet."

"Good. Listen, there's a chance the people who attacked Knux might come to the Island. Get everyone back from searching and ready just in case, okay? I don't know quite where I'm going to come out of the jungle, I'll call Tails when I know, okay?

"Got it! But is Knuckles all right?"

Sonic hesitated. There was too much to explain and he couldn't get his own head around it anyway.

"He's unconscious." Simple facts it was then. "I think he'll be able to move along once he wakes up though."

"Oh."

Amy had to at least suspect this was less than the full truth, she knew him too well but Sonic didn't elaborate and after moment she signed off with, "Stay in touch then."

"Yeah."

Sonic put the radio back in his pack. Knuckles was stirring at last although 'awake' was too strong a word. Incoherent and almost inaudible, he moaned and rolled onto his side, his two hands going to the two swelling bruises on his head and jaw.

"Knuckles?" Sonic dropped to the ground in front of him. Knuckles blinked at him from between his arms.

"Sonic?"

Sonic grinned in sheer relief but Knuckles' next words wiped the smile off his face.

"You hit me."

Knuckles didn't sound entirely certain of this and Sonic would have launched into an explanatory apology but he'd already carried straight on.

"I'm sorry, Sonic."

"Uh..." Sonic stared at him. This was not the ideal moment for soul searching and he was already rattled so before he'd really thought it through he shot back as he always would have.

"Yeah? So you damn well should be, pal! You've had us running all over-" He stopped abruptly because Knuckles had drawn back so suddenly with such wide eyed dismay that it was clear mock-anger was not the right note at all, much less the frustration that threatened to spill over and make it real.

"Please, Sonic, I'm sorry. I know you wouldn't really have taken it. I knew then, really, I just... I can't help it. It makes me think that way. I don't know... I can't... As soon as I'd hit you I knew you wouldn't really have taken it. But I couldn't..."

Sonic stared at Knuckles who stared right back from where he lay on the ground, a pleading look in his eyes that Sonic could not begin to guess the cause of.

"Hit _me_?" Sonic shook his head. "Knuckles, I have _literally_ no idea what you're talking about. Look, you're probably concussed or something, you're confused. I'm only angry because you had us all scared. You don't have to worry about the Island either, the Chaotix and Amy are there and probably Tails too by now. The Master Emerald is safe. A bit weird, but it's fine."

Knuckles turned his head burying his face in his arms but not before Sonic caught the bitterness in his expression, as shocking as the plaintive look that had been there before. Not before he caught the mumbled, " _It_ is always _fine_."

Inexplicable or not the sudden anger seemed to give Knuckles new strength and he struggled to his knees, then after a moment more, his feet. Sonic had reached to help but been ignored, although that in itself was nothing new.

Sonic watched him look around the clearing then move slowly towards the crushed undergrowth where Sonic had crashed his way through it.

"Knuckles! What are you doing? Where are you going?"

"The village."

Sonic stared. "Are you mad? Why? After all... All..." Sonic waved his hands vaguely trying to take in the whole situation. "This!"

Knuckles didn't answer. Sonic thought about grabbing him, remembered his reaction in the village and thought better of it. Instead he zipped round in front of him and planted himself firmly in the way which direction he turned. After several seconds of this Knuckles sighed and stopped.

"Anyway," Sonic cast about for delaying tactics short of outright force, "Anyway, how are you going to find the way back? You were out cold for the trip, in case you've forgotten."

Knuckles looked past him, over his shoulder at the jungle. "A blind wombat could follow your back-trail, hedgehog."

Sonic's heart lifted because for a brief moment that had actually sounded like Knuckles. In the next moment though it had passed. Knuckles' shoulders curled forward, his head hung low, one bandaged hand reaching to support the opposite arm.

"Are you going to stop me, Sonic?"

And this time Sonic recognised what was missing. There was no question in Knuckles' tone that Sonic _could_ stop him. None of the 'Just you try it' challenge in his voice which would normally accompany such a question.

"Knuckles..." Sonic wasn't sure what he wanted to say. The honest answer was 'yes.' He had no intention of letting Knuckles go back to that damn village to be kicked around some more. But how could he force him to leave against his will, however confused, without compounding that horrible hopeless, helpless, deadened look in his eyes?

"Please," Sonic said, feeling almost as lost as Knuckles looked. "Can we just talk about it?" He glanced around, and up at the sun counting the time they'd been here already. "Is it safe to talk here? Are they likely to follow you?"

No answer. Sonic stepped forward, half tempted to duck down into the line of sight of the motionless echidna's downcast gaze.

"Knuckles," he repeated instead. "Are they going to come looking for you?"

But that too turned out to be the wrong thing to say. Knuckles' head flew up and he shot backwards, wide-eyed, collided with a tree behind him hard enough to knock himself breathless and staggered forward again. Sonic caught him before he fell but he reeled away with a cry that sounded like panic, landing on his knees.

Steadying himself with one hand flat against the jungle floor he stared up at Sonic.

"Don't ask me!" His voice shook. He sounded horrified. Terrified. "How can I possibly know that? Don't ask me that!"

"Woah," Sonic backed off a step, spreading his hands in as harmless a gesture as he could. "Alright. Okay." He dropped to his own knees. "See? It's fine. Chill. You don't want to talk, we won't talk. It's all good. Relax."

Knuckles eyed him warily and Sonic stared back, at a loss. Almost any of the others would have been better at this, he reflected. Tails and Amy were better at the empathy thing, the Chaotix had spent more and calmer times with Knuckles than he had, all of them took the Island and the Master Emerald more seriously than he did. Any of them would have had more ideas for soothing this alarming, shell-shock-like distress than Sonic did.

While he was still trying to think of the right thing to say, Knuckles broke the silence first.

"I'm sorry, Sonic. I know that you intended to be my friend."

Sonic fought with the decision of whether or not to approach. Every instinct said Knuckles needed either a shake or a hug and if it had been anyone else Sonic would have known which. As it was he only sighed again and stayed put.

"I _am_ your friend, Knux."

Knuckles frowned and Sonic couldn't tell if it was irritation at the diminutive which had slipped out, or puzzlement at his response.

The latter maybe because he was shaking his head slowly.

"No one is my friend." His words were slow too. "Because I am no one's friend."

Sonic shook his own head at once. "Then I don't know what your definition is, but it's way different to mine! We're friends, Knux. We've saved each other's butts, we've crashed at each other's places, we've played stupid games together."

Sonic edged closer. "Well, I've roped you into stupid games anyway."

Knuckles continued to watch him, the frown still on his face.

"Of course we're friends. Why do you think I came looking for you anyway?" Sonic asked. "You didn't make it easy you know."

Knuckles swallowed and spoke. "It's dangerous to leave it unguarded."

Sonic wasn't sure whether that was a response to the question or the statement, but it was better than panic.

"Yeah," he agreed. "So it must have been important for you to come down here, right?"

"I thought so." Knuckles met his eyes properly at last. "Or I wanted to. _You_ want me to go back to the Island."

"Don't you want to?"

"I did... Then I didn't... I don't know." The frown deepened. "I can't think. My head hurts."

Sonic grimaced because even the admission itself was unlike Knuckles. "Yeah, I bet it does. Look, we don't have to go to the Island. You can come to mine, or Tails' or Vector's if you can deal with Charmy. Even Amy would put you up. You can get your head sorted." In both senses Sonic thought grimly. "Then you can decide. Then if you want, we could come back. If that's really what you want."

Knuckles stared at him, looking uncertain as to whether he thought that was the truth or not. Which, in fairness, Sonic hadn't quite decided himself. He took a half step forward towards the jungle as though he'd forgotten Sonic was standing in the way then stopped.

After a long moment he nodded slowly without meeting Sonic's eyes. There was nothing but resignation in that nod. It was not agreement.

It was surrender.


	17. 16 Of Choices

Sonic had started off at a walk, but steadily picked up the pace for as long as Knuckles seemed able to stay with him. He wanted to spend no more time than necessary in this jungle. But neither did he want to go back via the villages, in case they _were_ being followed so they were taking as direct a route as possible given the undergrowth, to the nearest edge of the jungle, steering by the sunlight filtering through the canopy. When he'd suggested they run Knuckles hadn't objected and it wasn't until some time later, when he went sprawling to the ground, that Sonic realised he should maybe have questioned that more closely.

"Knuckles!" He dropped to his side. The echidna was breathing in huge rasping gasps, which, as far as Sonic was concerned were out of all proportion to the actual speed they'd been travelling and he'd gashed his free arm on a rock when he'd fallen, twisting as he fell to avoid landing on the one still in the sling. He tried to stand anyway and even managed it, though he visibly swayed.

"Sit back down," Sonic said firmly and Knuckles complied at once. "You're all in. You could've said!"

"You said run, Sonic. I was running."

Sonic paused, the first aid kit in his hand. "Oh right, and you seriously thought I actually meant to add - 'and keep on running until you keel over and hurt yourself'?"

"I _didn't_ think about it." Knuckles' voice was muffled, his head hanging between his knees like someone fighting off nausea or dizziness, trying not to pass out.

Sonic nudged his good shoulder, trying to lighten the tone.

"Are you going to give me the hurt feelings face if I make the obvious joke at this point?"

Knuckles raised his head and gave him a baffled expression instead. Sonic sighed.

"Okay, let's patch up that arm then you can get some sleep. This is as good a place to rest as any."

* * *

Knuckles hadn't thought he'd be able to sleep in the broad daylight, sore and hungry and anxious, but he did - falling into troubled dreams where allies and enemies alike yelled at him to go one way while dragging him in another and his struggles churned the ground underfoot to a swamp until he was too mired to move at all.

He woke with a start which was becoming painfully familiar, eyes flying open while his heart still raced and he held himself motionless waiting for his mind to catch up with his body and process what was happening. It was daylight, flat mid-afternoon light. Too quiet - he wasn't in the village, he was out in the jungle, off the paths, with Sonic.

He turned his head fractionally, not sure he wanted yet to announce his wakefulness, watching from under the arm he'd drawn over his face to keep off some of the light. Right now Sonic was sprawled on his side, head propped up on a hand, frowning back at him, but he couldn't have been resting long, Knuckles realised. While he'd slept Sonic had been clearing their route ahead, there was a clear path now cutting through the undergrowth. He had the remains of assorted plants still stuck in his quills.

Knuckles did not like the way Sonic was looking at him. It was a curious, worried, unhappy stare. As though he was working something out about him and disliking what he discovered. Knuckles closed his eyes against the sun and Sonic's stare alike but the hedgehog wasn't fooled.

"Hey," he called and Knuckles heard him getting up. "You awake? You want breakfast? Lunch? Whatever?"

Knuckles sat up slowly. When had he last eaten? If it was afternoon now then it was more than a full day.

"Yes," he said, then added as an afterthought, "Please."

The addendum only made Sonic frown more but he turned away and fished in his backpack, handing over an assortment. It was heavy on sweet stuff, all chocolate and sugar and salt, but Knuckles snagged some cereal flapjack-style bars and began chewing his way through them.

"Feeling any better?" Sonic asked and Knuckles stopped, caught again between the truth and the answer which was wanted.

Sonic, though, had already taken his silence as an answer.

"It's alright. We can go slower this time." Sonic gazed at him a moment then spoke again. "I'd offer to give you a tow, but frankly, I can't see anyway of grabbing hold that's not going to hurt." He sighed. "You do know you look like hell, right?"

Sonic inflected it as a question, but it clearly wasn't one and so Knuckles didn't answer.

"Come on then," Sonic said. "Walking it is."

Knuckles got to his feet and matched his pace to the hedgehog's as they headed down the cutting Sonic had made. They moved without speaking for so long and it was so unlike Sonic to be so quiet that Knuckles found himself, against all expectation, wanting to break the silence. He _had_ wanted to talk to Sonic. When he'd though he was going to his death he'd wanted to. Had wanted to tell him to stay safe, to tell him that that he did, in whatever stunted, limited way he was capable of, consider him the closest thing he had to a friend. Whatever it was he meant by that.

"Sonic?"

Sonic turned to him with a smile so startled but so pleased that he knew speaking had been the right thing to do.

"I _do_ know that you didn't only come looking for me so that there would be somebody to guard the Master Emerald."

"Good!"

"If you had been injured doing it-"

Sonic cut across him. "I wasn't."

"You could have been. Anyone could have been. I made the Island as dangerous as I possibly could."

Sonic threw him a smirk. "We're good at what we do!"

"It would have been my fault. You set out to help me and I would have killed you. And it wouldn't even have been anything more than a side effect. I didn't even give it a second thought."

"Yeah, well it sounds like you're giving it second third, fourth and fifth thoughts now, Knux. So chill. It's fine,."

Knuckles fell silent, watching the hedgehog clear the next stretch ahead of them. Perhaps Sonic just didn't want to discuss it in case he lost his temper again. It was, after all, beyond belief that he _wasn't_ angry about it, however well he hid it. Apart from anything else he must know by now that Knuckles had been lying to him when they spoke on the radio. Lying by omission was still lying.

They walked on a few more minutes then Sonic slowed and turned to him.

"You don't actually believe me do you?"

Knuckles slowed even further, dropping back. Why did people keep asking him things they didn't want the true answer to? Lie again or call Sonic a liar. He looked away, shrugged, avoided the choice and hoped the hedgehog would let it drop.

Some chance.

"Alright," Sonic said. "I was pretty ticked off that you'd just head out like that without a word. Like you didn't trust us."

Knuckles hung his head. Wasn't _capable_ of trusting him, that's what that meant.

"I'm not angry with you, Knuckles." Sonic looked him up and down. "Not right now. We were frightened something had happened to you - people get angry when they're frightened sometimes y'know?"

"I know."

Sonic gave him a far too knowing look. "I suppose you do. You want to tell me what all that ranting and raving about the Master Emerald was about back in the village?"

Knuckles' stomach turned over having almost settled at Sonic's reassurances. He didn't want to. Didn't want Sonic to know. Sonic, who'd wilfully and carelessly thought better of him. But he'd been asked so he answered.

"They were scared, Sonic!" Sonic gave him a sceptical look which he couldn't stand and the words came tumbling out. "They'd had no contact with the guardians for generations. They were almost a story to frighten children with, a danger out of the past that was finally fading from all but paper records and then suddenly I was there in the middle of the village like some monster out of nightmare walking in the daylight and they were afraid!"

The sceptical look had not shifted from Sonic's face. "Most people hide under the bed from the boogieman - they don't tie him up and beat the crap out of him."

That was Sonic. Flippant and sarcastic and more than Knuckles could stand this time.

"It's not a joke, Sonic!" Unthinking and uncoordinated he swung away from the hedgehog intending _what_ he wasn't sure - to get away, somewhere, anywhere. Sonic was faster and caught him firmly by both wrists.

"I'm not laughing. Listen to yourself, Knuckles." Sonic gave his wrists a shake. " _Look_ at yourself. What have _you_ \- not some random guardian out of a scary story - _you_ , ever done to them to deserve this?"

Knuckles slumped.

"I don't know," he admitted.

"There - see!" Sonic sounded satisfied. He obviously didn't understand.

"No," Knuckles corrected him. "I really don't know. I don't remember everything I've done as guardian. The controller..." He corrected himself for Sonic's benefit. "...the Master Emerald, it stops me." Except that was too short, too simple an explanation. "Sort of..." he added, uncertainly.

Sonic was frowning, puzzled. "That still doesn't..."

"A guardian is a weapon, Sonic," Knuckles spoke over him. "A weapon created by the Master Emerald to protect itself. And when you find yourself with a weapon in your hand, that's been used against you,that you're afraid of, what do you do?"

Sonic still frowned, apparently without an answer, so Knuckles went on.

"You destroy it. Or you blunt it. You break it so it won't ever be a threat to you or yours or anyone else ever again."

Sonic looked appalled. As well he might, Knuckles thought, now that he knew what he'd been calling 'friend'.

"A person isn't a weapon!" Sonic declared vehemently, stopping in his tracks.

Knuckles kept moving, ignoring the exclamation because regardless of whether Sonic believed it or not, all it meant was that the converse was also true.

Sonic caught back up to him within half a pace.

"Are we going to go through this again? Wasn't once, with Shadow, enough? It doesn't matter what you think you were _made_ for, you're still a person."

"Shadow is dangerous as well, Sonic."

"Yeah," Sonic agreed readily. "But still a person. People have choices."

Knuckles would have argued further but it was difficult because Sonic really did believe that. He'd seen him arguing with Shadow, trying to persuade him to their side against every instinct the black hedgehog had been implanted with. He remembered Sonic arguing with _him_ , trying to persuade him away from the Floating Island for any number of reasons, both trivial and deadly serious, always assuming it was in him to choose.

For himself, even when he'd though being Guardian was a good and rightful thing, Knuckles had never thought it a _choice_. He doubted either he or Sonic would ever convince the other on that point. So he kept quiet.

Sonic did not.

"Even if the choices don't make sense to anyone else they're there. I mean, I don't know why you didn't get out of that village at the first chance you got. And I can't even begin to understand _their_ choices, but they made them all right. I find it pretty hard to believe you came all this way to start a fight - so it must have been them that chose to attack first. Chose to half murder you."

They were still moving, Sonic's words as relentless as his pace.

"Just how much of a fight were you putting up with a filthy great hole in your gut and a broken shoulder? How _frightening_ can you possibly have been?"

Knuckles watched the jungle floor and kept moving. Not turning to Sonic as he answered.

"The Master Emerald-"

"To hell with the Master Emerald!" Sonic grabbed him and swung him to a stop, though he was already reeling from the profanity.

"To hell with how frightened they were! The damn thing gives me the screaming abdabs as well, it's no excuse for mutilating someone!"

Knuckles searched for the right words, He wasn't good at words. He hadn't found the right words to explain himself to the village, couldn't find the right ones now to explain the village's fears to Sonic.

"They thought other guardians would come looking for me. You don't know what that thought meant to them. After everything that had happened you can't blame-"

Sonic threw up his hands and there was a confused moment where Knuckles startled, stumbled and regained his footing before realising it was a gesture of only frustration, not aggression and in any case it was _Sonic_ standing there.

Sonic who had frozen at his reaction and now stared at him. When he spoke his voice was quiet again.

"Well I _do_ blame them, Knuckles. I blame them for that, right there. _That_. When have you ever flinched? From me, from anyone? I don't care what reasons they think they had, if what they did to you did that, then they're wrong."

Knuckles felt the tiniest damp half flicker of anger. Yes he'd flinched, why wouldn't he flinch when any sudden movement could be a blow, when any conversation could turn instantly to shouting whether or not he knew what it was he had done to provoke it?

And he still didn't know what Sonic expected in answer. So he waited.

For once so did Sonic, watching him in silence, eyebrows raised.

The silence gave him space to think. He didn't want to think, was too tired to think. The Master Emerald, keening distantly at his denial of it, chafed at his mind, a deep dull ache at the back of his head and the base of his spine, a chill awareness of its absence sharpening every injury. It made it hard to concentrate, hard to work out what Sonic was angry about now when he'd said he wasn't angry moments before.

"You're not thinking straight, Knuckles."

True enough.

Sonic looked like he would have said more but was interrupted by the sudden crackle of his radio.

"Sonic?" Tails' voice and so bright and loud and cheerful that Sonic looked as rocked back by the contrast as Knuckles felt. "Amy said you found Knuckles! You both okay? Where d'you want picking up?"

Sonic glanced at Knuckles a moment longer then lowered his attention to the radio.

"Yeah, we're on our way out of the jungle. About.. Oh I don't know - a day from the southern edge? If the undergrowth doesn't get any worse."

"Cool. If the RDF is working and you're heading south you should come out on the far side of that marsh. Should be easy to find a landing spot."

"If the what- never mind. Fine. Good. See you soon!"

Sonic released the transmit button and looked back up at Knuckles.

"Ready to move on?"

For a moment Knuckles considered pointing out that it was Sonic's who'd stopped him but decided he was too relieved the hedgehog had dropped the previous topic to bother. And he did want to be out of the jungle. The other echidnas would never believe he hadn't run, he couldn't go back now, and so the surroundings were nothing more than a reminder he could as well do without.

He nodded and followed Sonic.

They both seemed to have run through their stock of words and the day passed with no more than comments on the going underfoot, the natural obstacles the jungle posed and Sonic's wary concern for the state of Knuckles' stamina which he did his best to brush off, embarrassed by how easily he still tired and not wanting to reopen discussions on what exactly had led to it.

They rested once, taking half a night's sleep each with the other watching and Knuckles was glad to find Sonic didn't argue over him taking a full watch.

In the morning they moved on again. The undergrowth thickened as they reached the edge of the forest around midday and Sonic resorted again to spin-dashing it with Knuckles pulling the broken branches aside, one handed. They were both hot and bothered by the time they pushed through the remaining undergrowth and out into the knee high scrub and tall grass at the edge.

Tails and his biplane were nowhere to be seen but the sight-lines were short here and this grass was surely too long to land in anyway.

"I'll have a recce," Sonic said, casting abut, presumably for a landmark. "Stay put, yeah? Have a rest." He shrugged the backpack of supplies off his back. Have a snack."

Knuckles didn't much like the impression of being deposited along with the baggage but it was obvious he'd only slow things up so he took the bag without protest and settled himself to the ground as the hedgehog took off through the grass.

The supplies were a tumbled mess inside the bag. Probably he should have carried it while the hedgehog attacked the undergrowth he reflected. But the food was as edible in pieces as it was whole and it was mostly the water he wanted. The sunlight was pleasant but almost too warm after the muggy shade.

He saw Tails before Sonic when they returned, keeping pace above and a few yards behind. Knuckles got to his feet and closed the distance between them, wondering why Tails had bothered to make the trip back.

Sonic skidded to a stop beside him. Tails didn't stop at all.

Instead he barrelled straight into Knuckles wrapping both arms and legs around him in a bear-hug that almost took him off his feet and would have done if Sonic had not steadied him with a hand at his back.

"Knuckles! You're alive! I mean I sort of thought you must be 'cause the Master Emerald was weird but I guess it'd've been even weirder if something even worse had happened t'you, but I still wondered maybe..."

He hicoughed and squeezed tighter while Knuckles gaped down at him, then at Sonic who only looked amused at his bewilderment but did reach around to pat Tails comfortingly on the back.

Knuckles might have tried the same since it was obvious even to him that what Tails wanted was physical reassurance, but the fox had come at him so fast and unexpectedly Knuckles hadn't even raised a hand to fend him off with the result that both arms were pinned down with Tails' wrapped around them, clinging tightly. He could probably overpower the cub even with one arm and the discomfort of having his injuries mashed all over again but it didn't seem quite the appropriate reaction and so he stared at Sonic for help.

"Come on, Tails, let him go," Sonic said, and the amusement was in his voice as well as his face.

Tails slackened his grip and Knuckles squirmed his good arm free. Carefully he mimicked Sonic's approach, patting Tails carefully on the back.

"You're all right!" Tails' voice still sounded wobbly.

Knuckles met Sonic's eyes over the top of the fox's head and understanding passed between them. Tails was almost half the hedgehog's age, a child still in spite of his cleverness and he didn't need to know everything.

"Yeah" Knuckles said, keeping his voice quiet. "I'm all right."

He saw Sonic grimace but he didn't contradict him and after a moment Tails let go and stepped back, wrinkling his muzzle as he sniffed and blinked rapidly. His eye lit on the bandages, the sling, the lump on Knuckles' head.

"You're hurt? What happened?"

To Knuckles' surprise he was saved from answering by Sonic.

"Not now, Tails, it's been a long trip. Can we go back to your place?"

Tails frowned. "Sure, if you want but, Knux, don't you want to get back to the Island? The Emerald is really-"

"Later, Tails," Sonic said. "I'll explain later, but right now everyone just needs a rest, okay?"

Tails shrugged, looking confused but unconcerned. "Sure, Sonic."

Sonic set a pace they could all match on the way back to the open ground Tails had found to land the Tornado. Knuckles hesitated beside the aircraft, looking back at the jungle they'd left. He couldn't go back. He knew that. But there was something more final about leaving by air than there had been about leaving the jungle itself on foot.

Sonic had leapt up on the top wing and reached down to boost Knuckles into the rear seat.

Tails ran through some checks, muttering to himself then with a splutter and a growl the engine fired into life. Knuckles squirmed lower in his seat, out of the slipstream. The noise meant that in the absence of urgency there was no particular expectation to talk which was something to be grateful for.

After a few minutes Tails opened the throttle, turned the aircraft into the wind and accelerated, the large wheels bouncing then lifting from the rough ground into the air. Knuckles closed his eyes. There was nothing to be gained from looking down, or back and maybe it would be taken for sleep.

* * *

The Tornado was fast. Indeed, to hear Tails tell it, for a biplane it was ridiculously fast, but the flight was still a long one. They stopped once for fuel and once to overnight in a tiny village where Sonic drank what looked to Knuckles like bucket sized quantities of a hot, sweet, sticky drink - claiming he needed to warm up after being sat on the wing.

Knuckles kept his head down and his mouth shut, letting Sonic fend off Tails' questions about where he'd been, what had happened. He wasn't entirely sure why Sonic had decided to do so but he was glad of it anyway.

Dawn saw them airborne again and by midday the terrain around was starting to look distantly familiar. He'd been here before, seen it from the Island at least, crossed it on foot when for some reason or another Sonic and Tails had persuaded him down. Tails' workshop was here, cut into the cliff-face overlooking the beach.

Tails banked to bring the aircraft just offshore and approached from the seaward side. As they rounded the headland however it became clear than something was dramatically wrong.

Instead of the subtle half hidden entrance, blending with the terrain, a gaping hole stood in the cliff face, stone tumbled in disarray down to the shore and the plant-life was blackened or blasted away altogether. Sonic glanced over his shoulder and Knuckles saw his own shock mirrored there.

The place had been completely destroyed.


	18. 17 In the Sky

With the usual landing area a wasteland of rumble, Tails landed the aircraft behind the workshop in a large meadow. Sonic leaped down from the wing to face Tails as soon as the aircraft rolled to a stop, reaching out to put a comforting hand on his shoulder.

"You okay buddy?"

Tails nodded, though he looked shaken and leaned into the gesture. "It must have been Robotnik I guess? Why would be do that, come here?"

Sonic shrugged and looked over at Knuckles who'd jumped down out of the Tornado and followed them as they crossed the short distance to the back entrance of the workshop. To Sonic's surprise he looked calmer than he had for a while. Familiarity maybe - Robotnik was at least a predictable, simple enemy.

"He must have finally wondered why we came looking at the base." He beckoned to Knuckles. "We wondered if you'd had a run in with him, Knuckles. We went looking when you weren't on the Island."

Knuckles closed his eyes briefly at the explanation then started pulling one -handed at the debris that blocked the entrance.

"I'm sorry, Tails."

Tails' look of genuine confusion at this apology brought that line of conversation up short before Sonic could object to Knuckles' assumption of the blame. In any case something else seemed to have struck Knuckles instead.

"Tails," he stopped what he was doing and stepped towards the fox urgently. "If he searched before he attacked... Did you have anything there that would have told him where the Floating Island was?"

Tails froze, his face falling into an expression of utter concentration.

"I don't... Um... I had a lot of equipment with me, not here. But the previous measurements, they..." He looked from Sonic to Knuckles in alarm. "They would have still been on the computer, yes. I mean passworded and things but... "

Sonic nodded. There was no need to finish, they all knew the technical aptitude they were up against. He turned to Knuckles, expecting to have to fend off the inevitable explosion and found himself mistaken. Knuckles had his eyes shut, hand pressed hard against his forehead, teeth clenched, clearly fighting his own reactions.

"Call them," he ground out. "You had the radio, call them, on the Island."

He should have thought of that sooner, Sonic cursed himself, fumbling in the bag for the radio.

"Amy, come in. Vector? Espio? How do you read? Anyone? Mighty? Charmy?"

Static was the only answer. Tails looked up at him, worry all over his face, outright fear in his eyes.

Sonic's mind raced. It had been less than two days since he'd spoken to Amy. Even if whatever had happened had happened the moment he broke contact it was only two days. Knuckles would have known if Robotnik had gotten his hands on the Master Emerald, wouldn't he? Sonic looked across at him. Surely he would? However not himself he seemed? So could he assume Robotnik hadn't got hold of it yet? That the others were holding him off? A treacherous thought assured him it could be just traps holding him off. That the others could be two days dead already. Maybe that was even _why_ Knuckles looked so distraught.

"It might only be interference," Tails said, though his voice shook. "Robotnik could have set up a communications block of some sort. It doesn't have to mean anything's happened to them." The statement trailed into a question.

Sonic squeezed Tails' shoulder and handed him the radio. "Keep trying. We'll be moving any second."

He turned to Knuckles. "Can you tell? What's going on up there? Where the Island is?"

Knuckles pulled his hand away from his face and his expression when he looked up was so full of anguish Sonic almost stepped back in shock. He stepped forward instead and reached out, the same comforting gesture he'd made to Tails. It was all he knew how to do - he couldn't even tell if the echidna's distress was real pain or mental conflict but either way he'd pulled away from the physical contact.

"Come on, Knux, get it together." The words were abrupt, he didn't have time to pick and choose, but Sonic kept his tone encouraging. "That's our friends up there, they need our help. That's what we do right? Help? Get there in time, save the day, all that. Look out for each other?"

Normally he'd have pushed then. Nagged and cajoled and teased until Knuckles gave in. But he didn't. Whatever combination of persuasion and coercion had done it, some of the other echidnas' revulsion of the Master Emerald had clearly communicated itself to Knuckles. Sonic had forced him away from the village, but he'd force him no further. Not onto the Floating Island if he didn't want to go. Whatever internal struggle he was so obviously suffering he'd have to choose a side himself. It wasn't Sonic's place to.

He stepped back.

"Me and Tails are going. Are you coming?"

* * *

For handful of minutes he'd almost forgotten. For a tiny span of time things had been on their old footing. There was trouble and he and Sonic and the Tails would race off to deal with it - and then his own automatic, reflex question about about the Floating Island had brought the reality of it crashing back to him.

There was no way he could get involved with a fight against Robotnik in his current state without using the Master Emerald. If he stepped back into this battle, he stepped back into it all. Back into the controller's influence. Back into the role of Guardian. Back into the life of indentured protector of something powerful enough to over rule his heart and mind and body. Back into the long, empty spans of time, alone on an island in the sky.

Everything that had happened since he'd left in the first place would have been worthless. He'd just be a little less ignorant about his history and a lot more informed about how low he could be brought and still live. He would have given in more thoroughly than even in the village, given in to the fact that he could only be who he'd been made.

Sonic was waiting, Tails looked puzzled and worried at the delay. It would be easy to know if their urgency was truly needed up there. All he had to do was look where he didn't want to, feel what he'd been trying not to, and he'd know at once if any unwelcome foot walked on the Island or disturbed the Master Emerald. But even to look and feel would be too much unless he'd already decided to go back because it would not stop at that. It was all or nothing, he wouldn't have the strength left to give it up a second time.

"Knuckles? Are you coming?"

Urgency in Sonic's voice now.

Knuckles stared at him. Could Sonic and Tails and the others fight off the threat without him? Could he let them?

If they succeeded he'd never be able to face them again, he'd have to leave, find somewhere no one would ever find him. There were places remote enough, places he could survive.

If they didn't, if they were killed, he'd never be able to face _anyone_ again and would _still_ have to decide. Could he make himself refuse to intervene if Robotnik claimed the Master Emerald?

And there it was. The hook that always had him snagged and reeled him back, however much he kicked and fought.

Because he knew he couldn't.

He bowed his head.

"I'm coming."

* * *

Sonic had taken the wing again, leaving the back seat of the Tornado to Knuckles - who, in spite of his words, was still standing on the ground, head down, eyes closed.

Tails was in the cockpit, checks complete and his hands already on the starter and throttle. He looked questioning up at Sonic.

"Knuckles?" Sonic prompted.

Knuckles lifted his head, eyes still closed although he moved his head, turning from side to side as though he was looking around. His face was drawn into a frown of either concentration or discomfort. Abruptly he drew in a huge gasp of air and staggered, falling to one knee. Sonic leapt back down from the wing to his side.

Knuckles crouched on the grass, his free hand flat on the ground for balance,his body doubled over the one in the sling. After a moment he opened his eyes, sat back on his heels and lifted his hand from the ground to wave Sonic off as he approached.

"It's nothing," he said, though the catch in his voice put the lie to that. "It's just... a shock. After."

He didn't elaborate, or even seem to realise he hadn't finished the sentence.

"After...?" Sonic asked, trailing the question in the air.

Knuckles shook his head. "The Island is close. I don't know why. I didn't."

He stopped again, though it still wasn't quite a full sentence.

"High up," he went on. "Too high for people. If anything happens to the Master Emerald they'll choke before they fall."

Tails had clearly been listening - he nodded in understanding, "It maintains the environmental conditions as well as keeping it airborne." Knuckles nodded and Tails ducked down into the cockpit.

"It'll be a cold ride up," he said. "But I've got oxygen on board. You'll have to squash in, Sonic, it's not going to reach to the wing."

Sonic jumped back up to the cockpit, Knuckles following this time. It was cramped and the oxygen arrangement needed a hasty lash-up by Tails to make it work for three instead of two but eventually, they were rolling over the grass.

No one spoke unless it was a brief exchange over the heading and altitude or further vain attempts to raise the others on the radio. It was cold, uncomfortable, and tense. The engine roared, close to full power for longer than Sonic could remember Tails ever leaving it as they climbed until the ground grew silvery with distance, faces and fingers numbed with cold.

Sonic hunched his knees up and his shoulders in for warmth, almost curling up, at least as much as the space allowed. Beside him Knuckles was shivering and making no apparent attempt to stop. He wondered how Tails was doing, perhaps his thicker fur was helping. In any case it wasn't affecting his flying and he was the first of them to call out when the Island came distantly into view.

Smoke rose vertically from one of the grasslands, spreading and gathering above the Island as though it was generating its own private cloud cover. A silver fleck was visible intermittently through it.

"I'm getting up-sun before we go closer," Tails called. "If that's Robotnik he might have electronic tracking too but there's always a chance he's too occupied to be watching it and might not see us."

Tails dived on the Island from a high, fast approach, hoping to further delay their notice. A few hundred feet from the ground he hauled the nose up, scrubbing off the speed in weaving, skidding turns as they sank below the level of the Island's peaks.

The approach was so hair-raising that they were already on the ground by the time Sonic realised it was no longer cold.

"Did anything spot us?"

Tails was already jumping out. "Oh yeah!" He pointed. It wasn't Robotnik himself but an automated scout approaching at speed.

"I thought I might have lost him but," Tails shrugged and Sonic tensed ready to leap once the thing came within range. It wasn't too much of a challenge and he brought it down easily, but there were sure to be more now they'd been seen.

Knuckles turned away from the broken bot when it fell, towards the rugged hillside and broke into a jog without comment.

Sonic hesitated a moment and then followed.

"Want to explain?" he asked. "I mean, I love a plan as much as the next hedgehog. Is there a plan?"

"Try the radio again, Tails," Knuckles said still moving.

Tails thumbed the button. "Amy, Vector, it's Tails, does anyone read?"

There was a moment of empty white noise then Amy's voice, breathless.

"Where are you? We've been trying to call. Its Robotnik! Lava Reef's full of bots."

"We're here!" both Sonic and Tails answered at once but it was Sonic who continued. "Are you all right?"

"Mostly. The tunnels are narrow enough that they haven't been able to attack in numbers bigger than we can cope with, but they've started digging or cutting or something higher up the volcano."

"Okay," Sonic said. "We're coming. Hang in there." He cast about trying to determine exactly where on the Island they'd landed.

"I should get back in the air," Tails said. "There'll be more of the flying ones coming."

Sonic nodded, "Sure thing. Knuckles - where are we? How far from Lava Reef?"

Knuckles was still jogging towards where the hillside steepened into cliffs, though the fact it was costing him was clear in the faintness of his voice.

"Wrong side of this," he gestured at the hills. Foothills, that rose into craggy cliffs and mountains, the less blasted side of the volcano, Sonic realised. "But there's a way through. And the Master Emerald is in there. I need to get to it. I need... I can't do it from here. I'm too... It's..."

Sonic couldn't in fact see an 'in' or but was prepared to trust to Knuckles' sense of direction where the Island was concerned. Tails was heading back to the Tornado and Sonic hesitated a moment. He could run around the volcano at least as fast as they could go through it in the tunnels even with Knuckles' guidance. If he could only be sure Knuckles would make it. He'd seemed exhausted before they'd even left the surface - he had to be running on sheer _stubborn_ by now.

He gave Tails a confident wave off and followed Knuckles as they rounded a crag and entered an almost perfectly concealed cleft in the rock-face.

Sonic recognised the tunnels though to the best of his knowledge he'd never entered them from this direction, There were traps here he knew but Knuckles, in spite of a lingering stiffness to his movements, walked smoothly, unhesitating. Moving here or there, glancing at where he was stepping from time to time, touching the wall or the pillars, or the rocky outcrops in a pattern which clearly bore some meaning for nothing impeded them until they reached the staircase leading up to the Master Emerald.

The dim blue-green glow lit the marble just enough to make out the treads but Knuckles stopped anyway. At first Sonic thought it was to catch his breath before the climb but Knuckles turned to him.

"I don't want to do this," he said. In the dim light the expression on his face was impossible to make out and before Sonic could answer he was already climbing.

Sonic hesitated a step behind him.

"Look," he said. "I know I wanted you to come. But I meant it about choices. You do have a choice."

Knuckles looked over his shoulder. "No. I don't. Letting the sort of evil Ronotnik would unleash with access to the Master Emerald loose in the world in order to spare myself from having to deal with it? That's not a choice."

He carried on climbing, still speaking.

"It's stupid to pretend I ever had a choice. I am never given a choice, _have never_ been given a choice. Not about becoming Guardian, not in the village, not by you when you brought me out. And not now."

They'd reached the top and the Master Emerald loomed over them. The chamber was still a complete mess, the Chaotix' camping out gear and the scattered maps still all over the floor, but Knuckles didn't look round or pause a second time. He spipped off the sling and bandages, dropping them into the general mess and walked straight across the chamber, tension in every line of his body. Still without hesitating he pressed both his bare hands against the Emerald. The light brightened at once and Knuckles dropped his head back with a gasp, his face bathed in the glow.

An intense, high, nerve-ringing tone sang out, abruptly joined by a sickening crunch as of cracking bone and Knuckles staggered. Sonic squinted against the light and moved closer. The energy pushed and pulled at him, giving him an uncomfortable, unsettled, unfocussed urgency that was almost a craving.

Knuckles was still on his feet, right up on his toes now, head flung back and another noise joined the din as he screamed through clenched teeth.

Sonic staggered back as though shoved and light grew so bright he was forced to look away, the Master Emerald's energies rejecting him in no uncertain terms in favour of its guardian. But what exactly it was doing to him, Sonic couldn't work out. Knuckles' half stifled cries cut off and Sonic shouted his name to no answer. Was it strengthening him? Healing him? If so it was being rough about it. Had Knuckles known it would be like this?

Before he got any closer to working it out, the light of the Emerald faded to its normal intensity, leaving Knuckles standing before it and glowing fiercely himself, a hard, white light that washed out the red of his fur to almost pink. Flames danced and flickered in thin air around him and his fur shimmered in their light. Iridescent - green, gold, red again. He stood straight and easy, tail high, head up. The awkward slant to his body from the poorly healing shoulder was gone and there was no trace of any of other injury remaining. The light refracted off whole and wicked sharp claws, his spines - no longer sparse - floated loosely up around his face as though gravity had become at least partly optional. The whites of his eyes were green-tinged, emerald-hued.

Despite the fact that this was presumably the whole reason Knuckles had led them here first, Sonic gaped. Knuckles tipped his head, looking puzzled at his shock.

"Go to the others in Lava Reef" he ordered. And there was no question it _was_ an order - his voice as hard and cold as the glaring light. "I'll find Robotnik."

Turning away he launched himself into a glide from the top step. If glide was the right word for a manoeuvre with such ballistic speed. Sonic took the steps half a dozen at a time in trail, hoping Knuckles had the wit to do something to avoid him having to deal with the traps on the way out.

He found himself almost eager for a plain, simple fight.


	19. 18 Chaos

It wasn't flight, the tunnels were too low for that, but nevertheless Knuckles' feet barely touched the rock and dirt floor as he raced along and he leapt as he reached the open air, leapt and swept up into the clear, warm air of the Floating Island's mountains. Up and further up, watching and feeling and noticing everything at once. The movements over the Island, the route the hedgehog took through the tunnels, the fight going on at the borders of Lava Reef, Tails turning and twisting through the sky in pursuit of other intruders, and the blot that was Robotnik's attack on the higher slopes of the volcano.

Further up, the whole Island was laid out below, its atmosphere laid out around him, right up to the limits of that atmosphere. Not that the absence of it would matter, not here and now. Its lack would do him no harm. There was almost nothing that would. Not like this, brimming with power, brimming with energy and below him one clear enemy. An unambiguous threat. Free of defensible or pardonable justifications, owed no empathy or quarter. A positive relief to attack.

Why had he bothered to come this high? The fight - the _welcome_ fight was below. He let himself fall backwards, flipping carelessly through a full 180 degrees to dive towards the smudge of smoke dirtying the volcano's flank. The wind battered against his face with the speed of the swoop but even that was right. The smell of it, the touch of it, was familiar, _right_. It was his sky, his air.

Robotnik's craft was a stubby-winged ugly shape outlined in the light of its own laser slicing into the exposed rock below, everything about it a wrongness, an intrusion, an affront. Knuckles barely slowed as he struck it, driving it and himself against the unforgiving ground.

Something exploded, fuel or an engine, and flung the craft and Knuckles both into the air in opposite directions. Knuckles righted himself first. The machine was listing but still airborne and he flew at it, grabbed a ragged wing-tip and heaved it towards the ground.

The results were unsatisfactory - even in the few moments of delay, Robotnik had obviously managed some semblance of damage limitation because now another engine fired, driving the craft away from the ground and away from Knuckles, towards the rim of the Island. Knuckles followed but a volley of cannon-fire sent him reeling tail over tip through the air. It did no real harm of course but there was still action and reaction, still momentum and inertia and by the time Knuckles gave chase they were at the edge. He soared and stooped on the craft again, smashing it against the rocky outcrop at the edge, a moment before it would have cleared it.

The machine toppled and fell, spinning into the empty air, the engine firing, stuttering, firing again. Knuckles watched. He could follow, make certain, ensure the Island's safety from that one threat at least, for good and all.

This one.

'Make certain of.'

Kill.

 _How many?_

This one.

 _How many have you killed to defend your controller?_

Three he'd said. One more would make four.

Four he knew for certain.

But he'd hesitated too long and the ship had fallen from eye-shot and earshot and awareness, was gone from the Island and the moment was gone with it and he wasn't sure why he hadn't followed. Hadn't made certain.

He looked up. The Island's sky was empty, even Tail's aircraft was back on the ground, out of sight but there, landed. Uninvited and familiar at once and there was someone at the entrance they'd used earlier and it could only be Tails but he ran anyway because no one should be there but the Guardian, only the Guardian, alone. So he ran and his feet hardly skimmed the grass.

* * *

After Knuckles veered off, Sonic ran the tunnels a shade more cautiously than usual. He'd encountered only the natural hazards of the place, but there were sounds around him, rock and metal sliding against each other, creaking and cracking of things under pressure out of sight and he found himself strongly suspected that the traps he was passing untouched were rearming themselves behind him.

He'd worry about that later. Somewhere up ahead were the Chaotix and Amy and somewhere beyond them, outside, was Robotnik. Regardless of Knuckles' opinion Sonic regarded Robotnik, whether on the surface or here as _his_ problem. Under the circumstances it hadn't seemed worth the argument though, and the others had sounded like they'd needed help, so for once he'd do as he was told and go there first.

There was daylight light ahead, cold blue instead of the murk of the tunnels and he accelerated. A shape leaped from the shadows ahead and Sonic skidded to a halt moments before running straight into Vector and specifically straight into a toothy snap which would have taken his head off.

"Woah! Easy, big guy. Here to help!"

The gape dropped into a grin. "We thought something had gotten in from somewhere else! Good timing. Something's happening further up we think - the bots down here are going nuts."

Sonic glanced around, Mighty and Espio were poised either side of the tunnel's entrance, Espio perched atop a rocky outcrop which formed part of the wall where it steepened. Amy was at Mighty's shoulder, pressed flat against the wall, weapon in hand. She beamed at Sonic in spite of the situation. Charmy hovered over their heads, occasionally darting out and back. Outside there was a scatter of bots in various states of collapse and damage.

The problem was clear. Together four or five people could easily hold this entrance. But the same narrow passage that prevented the bots attacking in force also prevented a sally out to take out more than one or two of them at a time either.

Unless of course you were a truly ridiculously fast hedgehog...

Sonic grinned. "Something's going to be happening down here too!" He glanced out again. "No problem. I'll clear enough of them that you guys can follow me out - Mighty and Vector hold the tunnel, just in case."

He glanced round. "Yeah?"

He got nods and turned to the opening. "Here we go!"

It made the difference. This time, with Sonic dashing anywhere the bots looked like pushing back, the others were able to spread out and attack more freely. There was a period of time which passed in a clattering, jumping, crashing, twirling, striking, dodging blur and then the sudden silence which meant everyone was concentrating on trying to assess whether that was really all of them.

Amy was the first to ask it aloud. "Is that the lot?"

Sonic looked around. "Looks like. Where's Robotnik."

Amy looked up the slope. "He was attacking up there, round the other side, digging or something, trying to get in without going through the tunnels. I don't see him though. Where's Knuckles?"

"Looking for Robotnik!" Sonic smiled at the back and forth, still buzzy with adrenaline, but Amy frowned. "I thought you said he was injured.

"He was. The Master Emerald..." he shrugged. "I dunno. It did a thing. Healed him or something. He looked fine. Better than fine - glowy, fly-y fine." It was easier to be flippant than describe how unnerving that had been. "Should probably try to find him though. And Tails!"

"We'll go back down to the Emerald chamber," Vector said. "He's bound to wind up there sooner or later."

Sonic nodded. "I'll go back to where we landed the Tornado earlier, Tails'll probably use it again and there's a way in near there too. Go carefully. I'm almost certain the traps are reset."

Charmy groaned but Vector only rolled his eyes. "I could start to feel unwanted y'know."

Sonic turned to head off and found Amy at his side. "I'll come with you."

"Uh, why?"

"It's a nightmare getting that many people through the traps all at once," She gave him just the hint of a smirk. "It's easier in twos - why else?"

Sonic threw up his hands. "Whatever!"

He moderated his speed just enough to not lose Amy entirely and they found the Tornado again parked, as Sonic had hoped, in the same spot. Tails was not with it however.

"He probably assumed we'd regroup at the Emerald too," Amy suggested.

Sonic nodded. "Let's go then."

The traps _were_ active again and for the first time Sonic was worried not to have found Tails again yet. Amy was sure-footed behind him and after the time spent up here at least somewhat familiar with the route but even so he had to pull her out of the way of two dead-falls and a geyser before the reached the steps up to the Emerald. Several people had already reached it from the noise drifting down but inexplicably it sounded like raised, angry voices, not the relief and excitement he'd have expected.

He took the stairs two and three at a time to find himself confronted with the baffling sight of Tails backing away from Knuckles, hands raised and his voice shaking.

"Look, just wait for Sonic and we'll talk about it..."

"Hey!" Sonic called. "Don't say 'wait' and this hedgehog's name in the same sentence, buddy!"

He'd hoped, and with hindsight knew it to be a vain hope, that the humour would diffuse whatever it was going on. It didn't manage that, but did at least deflect Knuckles' attention to him instead of Tails.

He was still shimmering, flickering with light and flame and the wild look on his face was as unfamiliar as the dull despair that had been there before. At his shoulder, Sonic heard Amy catch her breath in shock

"I told Tails to get off the Island," Knuckles said. "I'm telling you too. Leave."

"Or 'thanks for the help' as most normal people would put it," Sonic shot back, still trying to restore some normality to the situation. The, when it was obvious that approach was a non-starter he sighed and raised his hands as Tails had done, stepped forwards, in spite of Amy's whispered, "Sonic, don't."

"Knuckles, seriously, just take a second. Think. You've had a hell of a time, I get that. And now you're back here and full of chaos whatever and I still just don't think you're thinking straight. We're your friends, we're not just going to dump you here and shove off home without being sure you're okay."

"Okay?" Knuckles repeated. "I am _Guardian._ As long that _that_ -" He jabbed a finger towards the Master Emerald. "Is _okay_ then so am I. It's what I'm for." He looked around the chamber appearing to notice the remaining clutter for the first time. "And since I've got no choice I may as well do the thing thoroughly which means no one else should be here. None of this should be here!" He kicked aside one of Vector's mess tins, grabbed a fistful of Amy's papers from the floor and shook them under the hedgehogs' noses. The flames that still flickered in his fur were real enough because the paper caught at once, burning to nothing in his hands. He didn't seem to notice.

"Knuckles, no!" Amy cried out, dismayed. "Your maps!"

His face drew into a furious sneer. "Maps of the surface when I was never meant to leave this Island! What possible use are maps of the surface to me?" He flung out a hand towards the remaining array on the floor - green-gold fire blazed across the cavern, sending the whole lot up.

"I don't need them!" Knuckles didn't even look at the flames, spinning instead on the cooking gear and kicking so hard at the little hearth that the stones that had circled it shattered against the wall. "I don't need that! What's the point of a cook-fire when I wouldn't even be permitted to starve? Not to death anyway. I'm no use to it dead!"

Sonic had twisted himself and Amy away from the flying bits of stone, feeling them ping off his spines, but now he turned back, racking his brains for some way to get through to Knuckles. He had considerable doubt as to whether he could tackle him physically in this chaos-charged state but perhaps he could at least shock him into listening. Watching for an opening he dashed in, grabbing both of Knuckles' wrists.

"All right, that's enough-"

But Knuckles had yanked his hands free at once, twisting his wrists and grabbing Sonic's instead. He shoved, and distantly Sonic was aware of Tails yelling and a surge of chaos energy and Knuckles shouting.

"Get off this Island!"

And then the world turned black and green.


	20. 19: Cast away

Furious, frustrated, and exhausted beyond reason, Knuckles shoved the blue hedgehog as hard as he could. Shoved with more than even enhanced physical strength. Shoved with all the glittering chaotic energy that leaped and flickered around him. Shoved with all his will to have the hedgehog out of sight, out of mind.

 _Off his Island._

Shoved so hard he stumbled, startled himself at finding his hands empty, Sonic gone and Tails and Amy both screaming. Wailing. Shrieking at him.

"What have you done!"

"Where's Sonic? What have you done to him!"

"What did you do!"

Knuckles whirled to face the fox. Flames flickered before his eyes as his spines whipped across his face with the speed of his movement.

Tails hurtled at him through the air and chaos-fast reflexes meant this time Knuckles did catch him in mid-air, grabbed him by both wrists as Tails kicked and snapped at him.

"Let him go!"

It was Amy's voice, Tails seemed beyond speech and when Knuckles turned to look, still holding Tails off without effort. There were tears streaming down the pink hedgehog's face.

"Let him go, Knuckles!" she shouted again, then lowered her voice. Slowed it.

"Knuckles. Let go of Tails."

Knuckles stared at one then the other. At the sheer shock and horror on both their faces, at the fear and the anger.

 _How many?_

The words echoed in his mind again.

 _How many, for the sake of your controller?_

He let go of Tails.

Flames still danced in his fur and he was cold. A deep, empty cold that numbed his limbs and his mind. He stood staring past Amy, while Tails rained ineffective blows on him until she pulled him off. He couldn't look at them, couldn't bear to see again the same fear and hatred that the other echidnas held for him. That he'd just demonstrated he fully deserved.

"Knuckles." Amy's voice was still quiet and slow. The voice you'd use to talk to a wild, possibly dangerous, low-animal you were trying to soothe for long enough to run away.

"What did you _do_?"

The cold had knives in it. Icicles twisting up inside him, freezing his heart, his voice, that small horrified corner of his mind that still quailed at any question asked angrily enough.

 _What_ had _he done?_

Abruptly the cavern was filled with new voices, shouting, laughing, calling his name, and Sonic's name with such cheerful abandon that it was almost as shocking as the past few minutes all over again.

Vector led the Chaotix in the chamber.

"Hey! There you are!"

"Get out," Knuckles choked. "Get out of here! Get off the Island!"

"Uh..."

Vector hesitated, clearly prepared to refuse, but Amy was waving him off. "Go. Really. I'll explain but go."

The alligator frowned. "Right. Well if you say so. We'll be back when you feel more yourself, Knux."

The others also looked ready to argue but backed up behind him anyway.

Knuckles shook his head. "No. Go and stay gone." He sounded flat even to himself. Tried to find the anger that would warn them he meant it. "I don't want you here."

"We'll come back," Vector repeated. "When you're feeling more yourself."

They cast anxious glances at Amy and Tails then left.

"Knuckles, Where's Sonic?" There were tears on Tails' face too, matting his fur. His voice shook. "What did you do to him?"

Amy looked anxiously from Tails to Knuckles and back then opened her mouth but hesitated and closed it again.

For once Knuckles had no problem interpreting their reactions. Amy thought he'd killed Sonic. Tails clearly wanted to think otherwise but was afraid of the same thing.

And he himself... didn't know.

Couldn't be sure.

He hadn't intended to, not consciously. He'd wanted him gone. Gone away. And he'd _pushed_. Pushed not just with his hands, expecting to send the hedgehog tumbling across the chamber, but with that part of his mind which was constantly attuned to the Master Emerald. Where intention was turned to action by its power.

But chaos was a poor interpreter of intention and he'd acted on pure emotion, without thought, without a plan, and he had no idea what it had done.

What _he'd_ done.

"Where did you send him?" Tails was insistent but his words didn't make any sense.

"Send him?" Knuckles repeated numbly.

"That was chaos control wasn't it?" Tails' voice shook, took on a pleading note. "Wasn't it? So where is he?"

Knuckles stared at the reflected light shifting and playing across the floor and didn't answer.

Control.

That was a bad joke. Whatever it had been _control_ was the very opposite of it.

Even now he hadn't been able to let go. The light he was staring at was coming from him. He couldn't look up from it, couldn't face them, couldn't tell them he didn't even know what he'd done. And why would they believe him anyway? Guardians were untrustworthy, everyone knew it. Untrustworthy and dangerous.

But Amy seemed to have taken Tails seriously.

"It did look like it," she said thoughtfully. "The way he just vanished. Knuckles?"

He stood motionless, frozen, unable to lift his head, much less to speak to dash the hope in her voice.

He could feel their eyes on him. By the silence he knew they were as motionless as he was. Eventually they'd work out the reason he couldn't answer. Eventually they'd know what the village echidnas had known the moment he hadn't returned. He was Guardian still and damned by it.

The silence was broken abruptly but not by any of them.

The radio in Amy's skirt pocket shrieked with feedback before a voice issued forth from it.

"What."

The first word was enough for Amy to drop the handset in shock. It bounced at Knuckles' feet.

"The hell."

Knuckles stared at it, unable to quite process the voice or believe what he was hearing.

"Was that?" Sonic asked over the radio amid another burst of feedback.

Amy and Tails were shouting again, jubilant, triumphant sobs and yells. Amy scrabbled on the floor for the radio, yelled Sonic's name into it.

Knuckles staggered back out of her way. He was shaking, drowning. Distantly, he knew he should be relieved, but he was drowning. Drowning in the cold and the darkness that pulled him down out of the flickering light, muffled the sounds of relieved celebration, distorted them like echoes in a cave, like hearing through deep water. He was falling, but hadn't fallen, suspended, shining, pinned to his place by the light as the darkness rose to smother him and he fought for breath, for consciousness, for control.

"Sonic!" he gasped but any answer came in fragments, everyone talking at once, and he was falling away from the words.

 _"...that Knuckles?"_

 _"...hear me? I don't..."_

 _"Tell him..."_

 _"...shock I..."_

 _"...fire-hose...and his flames too!"_

 _"...he..."_

 _"...Knuckles..."_

He forced himself to look round at the sound of his name. Amy and Tails, worried looks on their faces. No Sonic. But Sonic was alive. Unhurt enough to shout and curse.

It was dark, the cold blue-green glow of the Master Emerald the only light.

"Knuckles." It was Amy repeating his name.

"Find him," he said, quickly, before she could ask him anything he didn't want to hear. "Go and find him."

They both moved at once towards the passageway, both hesitated.

"What about you?" Amy asked. "Sonic was right, we can't just..."

Knuckles shook his head, cutting her off. How could they possibly still think that was any concern of theirs?

"Leave," Knuckles finished the sentence but turned the single word into a demand. Almost a plea.

"We'll come back," Tails said.

"Don't."

"Sonic will!" Tails insisted.

"Tell him not to."

Amy and Tails looked at each other, still pausing.

"Please. Just go."

"Okay,"Amy said after a moment. "If that's what you want. For now."

Knuckles watched them leave the chamber, _felt_ them leave the Island's ground, felt the silence, the emptiness.

He reached again for the Master Emerald. Again flames flickered in the air, but only for a moment. This time he cast them outwards, circling, ringing and encompassing the Island, a barrier to keep out any and all intruders. He'd rarely done so, always believed that the more he could fulfil his role with the minimum use of the power the better, but what was the point of that now? It had made no difference to how completely he was under its influence.

He turned to face the Emerald, staring for a moment into its depths unsure of exactly what he was looking for. Then he lay down where he was and as he had once longed to do again, curled up on the smooth stone and slept.


	21. 20: Empty Island

As Tails had warned Knuckles, the very first thing Sonic wanted to do once they found him - dazed and bruised from falling almost all the way down the cliff-side where he'd re-materialised above Tails' workshop - was get back to the Floating Island.

Tails agreed at once. Amy declined.

"I'll go and find the Chaotix, tell them what's going on," she said. Then frowned. "If I even knew myself."

"Just tell them to wait," Sonic warned. "I sort of know. I think. But it takes some explaining, so for now tell them to wait."

Amy nodded, still biting her lip and moved off. Sonic climbed back aboard the Tornado which Tails had never left.

"You told _me_ that too," the fox said as he turned the aircraft into wind, flicking switches and handing Sonic one of the oxygen masks. "That you'd explain later. We've got a long flight back up again. You want to explain now?"

Sonic sighed and hesitated - Knuckles had barely explained even to him, and was it his business to spread around?

Tails wasn't deterred and began a list, in his "working it out aloud" voice, as though it was one more scientific puzzle to solve.

"Knuckles was injured while he was missing. Worse than either of you wanted to tell me. He went missing looking for what we think was a former echidna village. We came back to my place instead of to the Floating Island once you found him and you wouldn't say why. You both changed your minds when you realised Robotnik was after the Master Emerald but it took Knuckles longer. And once he was back there he didn't want anyone else there at all. Wanted us all gone badly enough that he was afraid he'd killed you by accident trying to make you go."

Sonic watched the back of Tails' head, as he reasoned, realising how little got by him these days in spite of Sonic's best efforts to protect him from the harsher realities. Had their motivations really been that transparent?

Tails was still speaking.

"So... It's something to do with the Master Emerald. He found something out about it? Something that frightened him?" Tails sounded incredulous, but nodded to himself. "Frightened him for us as well as himself. Yeah. Frightened, not angry - there were any number of ways he could have got rid of us, other than shouting and half-planned chaos control."

He stopped and Sonic was half tempted to applaud.

"But I don't know what he found out." Tails' ears drooped. "Or who hurt him, or why. To find out what _he'd_ found out? To force him to tell them?"

He half turned, clearly awaiting a answer, although his attention was quickly back on their flight path.

After a moment Sonic gave in.

"He did find other echidnas," he admitted. "That's who hurt him. I couldn't quite get my head round why - they seem to have told him a load of stuff about the Master Emerald being this huge evil thing and guardians just sort of brainwashed and messed up by it, forced to guard it."

There was a pause. Tails didn't turn round this time but Sonic could hear the frown in his voice.

"They attacked him for being the guardian even though they think he didn't have a choice about it? That doesn't make sense."

Sonic shrugged, realised Tails couldn't see it and said, "Knuckles thinks it does."

"He believes them?"

"Yeah. I think he does." Sonic fiddled with the strap of his oxygen supply and sighed heavily, misting the inside of his mask in the cold air. "Even if he'll talk to us I don't know what to say to help, Tails."

Apparently Tails didn't either because no answer came from the front cockpit. Sonic watched the clouds pass by beneath them and tried to find some optimism. Perhaps now healed and calmed down from the immediate fight Knuckles would be easier to talk to. Pain and fear and the lack or excess of chaos energy could hardly have been making things easier.

Possibly, Sonic admitted to himself, this was a vain hope - Knuckles had never been _easy_ to talk to at the best of times.

"Uh oh," said Tails and optimism evaporated into the cold sky.

"What is that?" Sonic stared at the Floating Island - encompassed in an orb of flickering flame and leaping golden energy. "Chaos energy?"

"Looks like," Tails murmured

The similarity to how Knuckles had looked using the Master Emerald was too obvious for it to be anything else.

"Can we go through it?"

"I seriously wouldn't bet on it!" Tails banked the aircraft to fly level with the Island, circling outside the limits of the glowing shield.

"What happens if you fire on it?" Sonic asked.

"You sure we want to know?"

"I'm open to any ideas that don't involve giving up and letting Knux sit here and sulk in a big flame-y bubble."

Tails shrugged, banked back towards the shield and fired. There was a bright flash and the shots were deflected widely, missing them by sheer chance.

Sonic and Tails straightened from where they'd ducked.

"Ooookaay," said Sonic. "About those other ideas?"

"Well we've got an hours' worth of fuel to think of them."

* * *

Knuckles jerked back to wakefulness fighting to process why. A nightmare? Someone had hit him?

No. No one had hit him, neither waking nor dreaming.

It was the Island, the chaos shield that had taken a blow, not him. Someone was there. Familiar, an unsettling, not hostile but disturbing presence.

Sonic.

He lay back down, eyes open, staring at tiny subtle changes in the green light spilling over the walls, until the disturbance went away.

Then he slept again.

* * *

Tails had refuelled the Tornado and was tidying the workshop while Sonic paced.

"We'll think of something," Tails said. "But I need this equipment working again. I need to know more about that shield to find a way through."

Sonic spun on his heel and returned the length of the room.

"Knuckles sent me back down here with chaos control," he said. "Could Shadow take me back with it? Through that shield?"

"And would he? And would Knuckles not rip both your heads off for inviting Shadow onto the Island?" Tails put in. "I don't know."

"If I had all the Emeralds could _I_ do it?"

"I don't know," Tails repeated, "You..."

He trailed off but Sonic could guess the rest. He wasn't good at the 'control part'. Was a danger.

"Do we even know where they all are if we do need them?" he asked to cover the moment.

"We've got three," Tails said, righting a monitor. "Shadow's got two, Robotnik's got one wherever he ended up and there's one missing."

He looked round. "You could go search. This is going to take me a few days at least to sort out. Or you could go and update Amy and the Chaotix, or you could go take another look at the shield - we'll need to monitor it and the Island's position manually until I get set back up."

He stopped lifting things back onto workbenches.

"Or you can help me with this, but please, _pleas_ e stop parading up and down kicking about it even more!"

Sonic stopped.

"Sorry."

He went outside, broke into a run. Maybe Amy or the others would have ideas of their own. At any rate it was a relief to be moving. It was hard to shake the feeling that they were back at square one. Waiting on equipment, chasing wild leads, still with no clue if Knuckles was actually all right or not.

* * *

Knuckles slept, on and off for the better part of a week. Waking to the fluttering, unnerving presence of someone brushing the outer limits of the shielded atmosphere or the twisting of his stomach in hunger, for despite his shameful display of temper over the cooking gear he did eat, lightly, from his stored supplies. It was easier than not eating.

He didn't venture out until those supplies were exhausted. There was no need. Why should he when he knew on the instant if anyone approached the Island?

He recognised his former routine of patrolling the Island, for what it was - a distraction for his mind and body, a way of avoiding thought, or of considering too deeply his situation. He didn't need to do it - not for the Island's safety when he knew every movement upon or above it, and not for exercise or bodily health when the Master Emerald would give him all the strength and power he could ever need to defend it.

It was only a distraction. But finally rested and restless he found he craved that distraction. He was hungry and cold and his vanished injuries still ached distantly. Phantom pain as though the healing had been too sudden for his body to quite believe it had happened.

He moved through the tunnels, his attention only half on what he was doing, absently avoiding the triggers and traps, his awareness on the insistent presence which was again skirting the edges of the shield. Sonic. Maybe Tails too. Why did they keep coming back? What did they expect to have changed?

He stepped out of the tunnels onto the moss and ferns which covered the above ground regions of Lava Reef. The sunlight hurt his eyes but warmed his fur. He squinted but didn't really need to be able to see where he was going to find his way. With his back to the ceaseless warm wind he headed down the slope to where a scatter of boulders kept off the wind but not the sunlight and the rich, almost black volcanic soil had yielded, against all probability, grapes.

He sat down on the largest boulder and plucked one, rolling it in his fingers before popping it into his mouth. The sudden sweetness almost took his breath away. He picked another, held it in his mouth a moment before biting down. Sweet and crisp and full of juice.

He eaten them frequently once. Before he'd left the Island. Not for survival or to fill a complaining belly. Because he liked the taste.

It wasn't yet noon and he sat stripping the cluster of vines of their grapes and and watching the shadows shorten as the sun drew overhead. Sonic had left, the Island was still. He walked further down the slope. Among the boulders had been the first patch of grapes he'd discovered growing on the volcano but he'd stolen the idea, built drystone windbreaks and propagated them. A long time ago. He flinched away from exactly how long. Checked the conditions of the stonework and the fruit instead. Made small repairs. Ate. Lay in the shade of the stones and vines and slept again.

He woke with the sun more than halfway to the horizon, thirsty and unsure whether it was that or again the disturbance at the edge which had woken him. There was a stream nearby, drinkable but tepid and sulphorous-tasting where it sprang from the rock. He wet his mouth but headed down the slope, away from the volcano in search of fresher water. His body protested the exercise at first, after days of inactivity on the heels of weeks of exertion and injury, but he kept moving and slowly his muscles warmed and loosened and movement became easier. When he reached a choice between continuing down to the thickening woodland or starting up again to the next range of mountains he chose to head up the steep slopes of Marble Garden. He was thirsty again and the climb wasn't helping but the water was good up there. Cold and clear, still springing from ancient fountains.

He stopped at the first of these he reached, panting and damp-furred with sweat, and gulped at the icy water before sinking to the ground. He stared at the fountain. Who had built that? Guardians? Blasting the marble into shape with raw chaos? Or had it taken slow, painstaking chiselling, forced labour from the surface?

Either way it was him who benefited. It had been well made. The water still flowed though the decoration was weathered.

He looked away and from the hilly vantage point scanned the sky, looking for a trace of the red biplane he knew was still there. Too distant to see, or behind him on the other side of the range. He could feel it though, the Master Emerald's awareness of it. And the Master Emerald's awareness as well of his own tiredness. He could feel it pushing, sensing, offering. The energy he'd expended could be replaced in a heartbeat, the tiniest trickle of chaos energy would be enough to do it.

He'd have resisted once, taken it as a sign of lack of fitness, climbed even further and faster tomorrow. Instead he allowed it, let it refresh him. Sat in the sun and tried to work out what it was that Sonic wanted. What would bring him here, every day, just to circle there?

He could make nothing of it and after a while he gave it up and climbed the rest of the way to the top of the slope. He would glide back to Lava Reef, he decided. The wind that had been flowing down the slope at the volcano was blowing up it here and the day had not yet cooled, the lift would be good most of the way.

* * *

A further week passed and Sonic divided his time between looking for Shadow, looking for Robotnik's crash site - the absence of which he found highly suspicious, and looking for the last of the chaos emeralds. Twice a day either he or Tails or both took the Tornado to the edge of the Floating Island, making visual checks at first then when Tails had finished repairing his equipment, taking energy reading.

"No change?" Sonic asked, leaning over the side and staring at the shield.

Tails shook his head.

"Nothing."

Sonic slumped and drew himself more fully back inside the cockpit.

"Okay. I suppose we ought to head back then, its - Look!"

He twisted to lean over again, Tails turning his head to look but missing it and answering, "What?"

"Go back. Look."

Sonic pointed, gripping the edge of the cockpit as Tails banked hard.

"Birds."

A flock of them. Low-birds, gulls or similar, and flitting in and out if the shield as if it were not there at all.

"Hmm," Tails said. "There's still no change in the readings."

Sonic reached under his seat and rummaged in the emergency tool-kit there and come up holding a heavy spanner.

Tails twisted to look at Sonic as he stood on his seat.

"Oh Sonic, don't. Find something else to-" but the spanner had already left Sonic's hand in a curving trajectory towards the shield.

There was a flash and a crack and it ricocheted back towards them. Tails had already started to bank to avoid it when Sonic leapt for it. Tails hastily levelled the aircraft to keep it beneath him.

Sonic dropped back into his seat, rocking the whole aircraft, and weighed the spanner in his hand.

"It's not damaged."

"It would have damaged _us_ if it had gone through the prop, Sonic! What was that for exactly?"

Sonic frowned, not quite sure himself but something about it was on the tip of his mind.

"Firing at it didn't work. The spanner bounced off. The birds flew through. On the Island, Knuckles burned the maps but not you or me. Do you think... Is it possible it only keeps off non-living things?"

Tails was quiet a moment. "It's a stretch. I mean there must be plenty of living breathing enemies Knuckles wants to keep off the Island, bit of wasted effort if it doesn't do that."

Sonic shrugged. "Well it was just an idea."

Tails was quiet again and still hadn't turned for home.

"We've never worked out exactly how the Master Emerald works. Or how Knuckles interacts with it. He doesn't know himself."

"Yeah," agreed Sonic. "He 'just does', that's what he told me once."

"Just instinct," Tails nodded. "Or if he ever did learn how it worked then he's forgotten. He remembers how to do it but now how or why it works."

"Yeah..." agreed Sonic again.

"Before he went away anyway," Tails finished. "He might know now."

Sonic shrugged. "I suppose. Where are you going with this?"

"Just that it can probably do things we don't know about. That I can't get my equipment to explain."

"And?"

"Well, what if what it's keeping out is as simple as 'things Knuckles thinks are a threat'?"

"A spanner's not much of a threat," Sonic objected.

"If I chucked one at your head you might disagree."

"Point."

Tails shrugged. "It's a theory, but I don't even know how we'd test for it."

Sonic looked down as the last of the gulls crossed the shield and descended out of sight.

"I can think of a way. Go closer. Go right to the edge of the shield. How far out does it come?"

Tails flew closer, wing-tip almost brushing the flames.

"It's thinnest, closest, at the edges, yeah? The rim? A sphere - a long way from the ground overhead because of the mountains. Close at the edge. What does that look like to you? Less than a hundred foot? More than fifty?"

"Sonic, what are you thinking?" Tails sounded wary, though he flew where directed.

"I'm thinking I can cover that distance from a spin-dash off the wing. I'm thinking that I've never really known whether Knux actually thinks I'm a threat to his precious shiny rock or not. And that it might be time to find out."

"You're mad," Tails said flatly. "One: It's just a guess. Two: He might very well do!"

Sonic climbed out onto the wing. It was true. He might. But Sonic found he couldn't quite believe that.

The mental image was still too clear of Knuckles curled, hurting and confused on the jungle floor. Pleading with Sonic, struggling with himself. An almost incoherent apology for something that had happened so long ago it was only now Sonic had worked out what he'd been trying to explain.

 _Please, Sonic._

 _I'm sorry._

 _I know you wouldn't have taken it._

 _I knew then._

 _I know you intended to be my friend._

It wasn't a scene Sonic intended to relate to Tails. Instead he said, "Well, nothing bad happened to the spanner, but if I do turn out to be a chucked spanner do try to catch me, right?"

"Sonic..."

Sonic reached down and clapped Tails on the back, perfectly aware than while he might protest it would have been perfectly easy for him to prevent the attempt altogether by simply flying them out of range. He hadn't done.

Sonic ducked, span, leapt.

Spinning, he couldn't see the shield approaching and he was rather glad of that

Even so, he closed his eyes.


	22. 21: Words and Air

In the last second before he hit the shield, Sonic uncurled from his spin-dash with a sudden inkling that, as far as "unthreatening" went, probably no one wanted to be hit in the head by a ballistic hedgehog any more than by a chucked spanner. Whether it made the difference or not he didn't know, but no impact came until he smashed chin first into the wet grass where he ploughed a furrow twice his own length in the soft earth.

Halfway across the Island, Knuckles shot to his feet as though the ground had been suddenly electrified. Sonic! Here. Not circling above but really here. How had that happened? He'd intended the barrier to keep everyone out, every conceivable threat to the Master Emerald.

He pulled himself up short. Is that what he thought Sonic was?

Emerald-ridden instinct said yes. His own experience said no. Curaca's scornful voice echoed in his memory, upbraiding him for not knowing the difference. _You stopped me calling him your friend yet he's ready to drop everything and rush to your help whether you want it or not._ In his mind's eye Sonic shook his head sadly - _You still think think I want to steal your damn rock._

He didn't think that. Did he? He searched his own reactions, ruthlessly, honestly. No. He didn't think that.

More importantly from the Master Emerald's point of view, he didn't _feel_ that.

And the Master Emerald, knowing his heart and mind had not enforced the barrier against Sonic. Against every instinct had allowed the hedgehog onto the Island.

Sonic was not a threat. Sonic did not need to be intercepted before reaching the Emerald. Knuckles sank back down to the ground. He could sit here and wait for Sonic and try to work out what in the wide wide sky he could possibly say to him.

* * *

Breathless but aware that Tails was watching every second, Sonic jumped hastily back to his feet to show he wasn't hurt and waved a thumbs up. Tails gestured back but it wasn't a thumbs up but a radio he waved in the air. Sonic made a face. Why hadn't he thought of that? He shrugged broadly enough to be clear and watched Tails climb overhead. Did he intend to drop it? He did, and apparently dropped radios were less threatening than chucked spanners because it fell through the shield without a hitch. Sonic leapt to catch it.

"You were right," he grinned, thumbing transmit.

"So were you," the relief in Tails' voice clear even through the handset. "Should I bring the Tornado in?"

"No," Sonic said. "Let's not push our luck. Get fuel then come back."

"Got it." Tails rocked the wings and banked away.

The radio crackled one last time.

"Sonic? Don't shout at him."

"Yeah. I'll try."

He hadn't intended to shout. But then he hadn't intended to in the jungle either. The dozens of times they'd argued before he'd never quite intended to. Sonic shook his head, gathered himself and broke into a run. Where would Knuckles be? Lava Reef surely. Hidden Palace. Well at least he knew that route like the back of his hand by now.

He never got there. Light flashing on something in the distance caught his attention and he headed for it. Closer he could see it was in fact the Master Emerald, but out in broad daylight, perched atop a ruined but still impressive dais surrounded by pillars. Knuckles sat atop a flight of steps watching him approach and the whole situation was so far from what he'd expected that he was for a moment lost for words.

* * *

Knuckles watched Sonic approach and stop, staring. After a moment the hedgehog climbed the steps until they were almost eye to eye, Sonic standing two steps lower, perhaps consciously trying to appear unthreatening. He wondered if the hedgehog was waiting for him to speak first and tried to find something to open with.

Before he'd managed it, Sonic found his tongue first.

"Uh, this is... he waved a hand around the shrine encompassing the clearing the ruins, the open sky all in one sweep. "New." He looked around again. "Well not _new_ new. I mean, I can see it's old. New spot I mean?"

"Yes." Knuckles found his voice hoarse. Two weeks of silence, he supposed.

Sonic frowned. "It's pretty. You don't think the Emerald is kind of exposed here though?"

Knuckles shrugged. "If I have to protect it by standing in the mouth of a tunnel I've already let things go too far."

Sonic made a non-committal noise as though considering this. Knuckles wrestled with his next words a moment because he _had_ decided what he wanted to tell Sonic, and that was the _truth_ and he hadn't quite done that. He hadn't lied, but it wasn't all of the truth either.

"I was tired of the dark," he admitted. "It felt like hiding."

Sonic reached out, by reflex it seemed. Knuckles steeled himself not to pull away but Sonic had already stopped himself, let his hand drop.

Seemed prepared to let that line of conversation drop too because all he said was, "Well it's a nice spot." He was quiet a moment longer. Far too quiet. Far too un-Sonic-like. Eventually he said, "Y'know I was getting ready to be yelled at for coming back up here."

"I don't know why you _did_ come back."

Sonic frowned and Knuckles concentrated furiously, trying to tell the difference between frustration and annoyance.

"Seriously?" the hedgehog said, one or the other creeping into his tone. "Do you seriously - actually - not know?"

"I know what you'll tell me," Knuckles said, giving up trying to work out Sonic's feelings when his own were enough of a challenge. "You'll tell me you did it because you're my friend."

"Yeah," Sonic said, and for a moment looked like he would stop at that, as though that was all the explanation there was. Something in Knuckles' confusion must have registered though because he didn't.

"Still don't believe it, huh?"

"I," Knuckles hesitated because he had decided to tell the truth but he didn't know what it was any more. "I don't know. I remember knowing that Guardians plain and simply don't have friends." He saw Sonic's frown and tried to explain. "I hardly know what you even mean by it and how could you know who was a trustworthy 'friend'? And even if they were, what if someone who wasn't used them against you? Friends are a danger."

Sonic's frown was a look of utter dismay now but Knuckles went on because he'd told himself he was going to tell the truth.

"I know you're trustworthy, Sonic. I know you can look after yourself. You're not a danger. But it's still... hard." He ran his hands through his spines, took a deep breath. It was almost physically difficult to go on but he did. "Curaca and the others said that the reason it's hard is that it's not just something I learned or was told, it's something I was... made to feel. Something reinforced by the controller - the Master Emerald - over and over, always at the back of my mind because it's always there, until it was part of who I am. Someone who's no one's friend."

Sonic looked appalled. Knuckles wondered if he'd finally realised it was pointless coming here, that whatever friendship he'd attributed to him was impossible, never happened, was just words and air. No feeling or meaning.

But he may as well be sure and he had promised himself he'd tell the truth.

"Do you know how you turn an ordinary echidna into a guardian, Sonic?"

The hedgehog shook his head, apparently shocked into silence.

"You bring them here, when they're still small enough to be physically restrained, even full of chaos energy, especially if the people doing the restraining are guardians themselves and you let that energy pour into them. You've felt it Sonic, do you remember the first time you felt it? What it was like?"

"Yes," Sonic said after a moment. "It was incredible. Overwhelming. Amazing and awful at the same time." He paused. "It hurt."

"Yes," Knuckles agreed. "It hurt. And then you do that again and again and again until they either lose their mind, or die, or learn to control it. If they learn to control it then you have a guardian. Then you mark them, scar them, brand them so everyone will know what they are and you'll know that they've learned control - to control pain and injury and fear, without losing control of the energy."

Sonic stared at him, transfixed, as he finished speaking. Again he started to reach out and stopped.

"Knuckles... You don't... You don't _remember_ them doing that... do you?"

Sonic shook his head almost imperceptibly as he spoke, clearly wanting the answer to be no. Knuckles wished it was a definite no but answered honestly.

"I don't think so. Not really. I dreamt about it. But I don't know if I was dreaming about what they told me in the village or what really happened."

* * *

Sonic stared at Knuckles, momentarily lost for a response. He couldn't square his words with his appearance. He looked healthy, not trace of injury remained, none of the panic or confusion or fury was left. He looked calm.

Much too calm for the things he was relating. Worse even than the helpless resignation with which he'd followed Sonic out of the jungle. A chilly, empty sort of calm.

Sonic thought hard for something to say to make a difference.

"Look," he tried. "I'm not a words guy. I've got no idea how to make the fact that stuff like that happened any better. I don't really have any big speech on 'Sonic's big grand definition of friendship' to persuade you that whatever you think, whatever that thing," he jabbed a finger at the Emerald, 'makes you think, whatever the other echidnas made you think, I think - I know - you're one of the good guys. You're my friend. And Tails' friend - why d'you think he nearly flattened you when he found us - and Vector's and Mighty's and Espio's friend. Charmy thinks you're downright awesome. Amy worries about you when we haven't heard from you."

He drew breath.

"You're my friend. That's why I came back, yeah. And it's why I've going to park my butt right here," He jumped up the last two steps plonked himself at Knuckles' side in demonstration. "And not budge until you're feeling better. If you make me go I'll come back. I'll find a way. Me, and Tails, and the others. We found you once already, we can find a way back here if we put our heads together, don't you dare doubt it. You don't have to talk to me if you don't want to, but you're not getting rid of me."

* * *

Knuckles turned to look at him, slightly agape.

He ought to be angry.

Knuckles stared at the hedgehog, sitting there, far too close, arms crossed, stubborn. Outright defiance of his authority over the Island, who came and who went. He ought to be angry.

He couldn't find it. Couldn't find much of any real emotion. It took long moments in thought to even work out whether he had any preference at all as to whether Sonic went or stayed. Longer ones to find the few words to express it.

"I won't force you to leave."

Sonic's face dissolved into a grin. "Knew it! And I can answer another question too - I do know what I mean when I say friend and reckon you do too really..."

Knuckles had started to shake his head but Sonic cut him off.

"You came to my birthday party."

"What?"

"You came to my birthday party. Why d'you do that?"

Knuckles frowned, remembering but sure the answer wasn't what Sonic was driving at.

"Tails told me you'd been kidnapped by Robotnik and needed my help."

Sonic deflated, then laughed. "Oh. Yeah. I wonder who could've put him up to that."

Knuckles tried and failed to work out whether it was embarrassment or amusement on Sonic's face.

"But I didn't mean that time," Sonic went on. "The other time."

Knuckles hadn't been sure himself, even then and definitely wasn't now but he tried, maybe Sonic did have some point to make.

"I spoke to Tails. He told me he'd have the Tornado on standby in case I needed to get back quickly."

"Yeah, okay, that's the whole 'making sure friends don't end up endangering the blah blah blah'' out of the way. _And?_ "

"He said you'd be disappointed if I didn't." It had seemed hard to believe then as well.

" _And_? Why should that have bothered you?"

Knuckles recoiled.

 _Why does a guardian care what happens to a hedgehog?_

The memory was sharp and sudden.

"Knuckles?" The insistent tone had vanished from Sonic's voice. "You okay?"

"I don't know."

Too late he realised Sonic would read that as the answer to the wrong question.

"I don't know why I came to your birthday party, all right? Tails said you'd miss me' if I didn't. That seems vanishingly unlikely but there didn't seem to be a particularly good reason to make you miserable on my account."

Sonic looked highly satisfied with this answer.

"You didn't want your friends to be miserable. There you go. Now you know why I've slogged back up here."

* * *

Knuckles tipped his head to the side, frowning in thought as though it was some deep philosophical point Sonic had raised instead of almost a 'gotcha'. Before he could contest it Sonic went on.

"And anyway you came the time before that just because you thought I was in trouble. How's that not 'friend'"

But Knuckles was shaking his head. "I'd have come for that, friend for no. You know too many things about this place."

"I'd have never told Robotnik any of that!" The indignation was instant and instinctive and there went Tails' advice about not shouting.

"You might have," Knuckles' voice as quiet and level as it had been all along. "Everyone has a breaking point. Everyone. How could you know what anyone else's is? You can't even know your own. Not until you reach it."

And abruptly they were off parties and back onto horrors.

Knuckles shifted where he sat and Sonic half expected him to jump up or turn away but he only ran his hands over his face once before resting them back on his lap. He'd found new gloves somewhere and the light of Master Emerald shone over their shoulders, tingeing the white cotton green.

Sonic sought for words.

"Knuckles," he tried. "It's okay." Sonic grimaced at hearing himself, of course it wasn't okay, nothing about this was okay in any shape or form, that wasn't quite what he'd meant.

"I mean, it's okay if you don't want to talk about it, or if you do, or..." He trailed off. "Or whatever."

Knuckles had looked up at the sound of his name and was still staring, though it wasn't Sonic he was staring at, his eyes were focussed well past him, a distant almost dazed look in them.

With what looked like an effort he refocussed on Sonic.

"I thought they'd want the Emerald," he said after a moment, barely audible but watching Sonic's reaction unblinkingly. "I tried to hide that the Island was empty, that there was only me, but I couldn't. I told them. To make them stop."

His voice turned cold and so angry that Sonic would have moved to a safer distance had it not been so transparently self directed.

"It hurt and I wanted it to stop so I told them. I'd have told them anything. Given them anything." He was still staring at Sonic. "I'd have given them you. I'd have given anybody up." He did turn away then, turning and standing in one movement, to face away from Sonic, towards the Emerald. "And all it took was a broken joint, and a rope, and time. Just that."

Without thought Sonic went with him, standing beside him, with no plan whatsoever other than to not go. He racked his brains for some reassurance, some logical counter argument but all that kept swimming to his mind was the state of Knuckles' injuries in the jungle.

"It wasn't 'just'...," he tried eventually. "You were already injured weren't you?" If Knuckles was going to beat himself up then at the very least he could make sure he was doing it with facts and not imagined weaknesses.

"Is that why you couldn't use the Emerald to get away - it was too busy keeping you alive at all?"

He thought Knuckles wasn't going to answer but after a moment he sighed, the anger replaced again by the dull, cold, calm.

"That was the idea." He looked up at the gem and then around the sweeping view of the clearing. "If I'd have tried I'd have either brought the Island down or completely lost control. I don't know what I would have done. There's a reasonably good chance I'd have killed everyone there. So I gave in."

Sonic considered this. He frowned.

"But you said... You'd have... Knuckles... This whole Island, that whole village... Those are pretty damn big 'anything's if you ask me."

Knuckles looked baffled which was an improvement over despairing so Sonic pressed on.

"You could have used the Emerald to get away?"

"No... I just explained it would have..."

Sonic didn't wait for the contradiction to finish.

"And you just told me you'd have done anything to stop them hurting you. Except you didn't did you?"

* * *

For a moment Knuckles felt the anger flare again. Did the hedgehog really think he was capable of all that just to spare himself?

A second before he'd have stalked off, albeit no doubt with the Sonic in trail, he caught himself, because he was suggesting the opposite wasn't he? Sonic thought he'd refrained out of some kind of altruism, when really it was... What?

He wasn't sure. Didn't have words. Except that he had so few choices in his life and control was one of them and somewhere, somehow he'd hung on to enough of it. That was what was left when hope and dignity and anger had run out. Control.

The other echidnas called the Master Emerald 'controller' with a slur on the name, a derogatory. He'd only seen that particular translation of it in one other place, forgotten, or the memory put aside in the same strange way as the unending list of winters, only remembered when he'd moved the Emerald here and seen it again. Carved on a half crumbled pillar at the base. "The controller unifies the chaos".

He'd thought back then it meant the Guardian.

"Knuckles?"

He'd been silent too long and Sonic was worried.

"Yes?"

Sonic frowned and Knuckles wondered if he'd asked him a different question which he hadn't heard. Sonic shook his head though, dismissing it.

It had felt like giving in though, no matter what Sonic thought and maybe he would have said so if Sonic hadn't spoken again first.

"I'm sorry we didn't find you sooner." Knuckles looked at him, startled, to find the hedgehog's eyes now downcast. "It wasn't until we spoke on the radio we realised anything was wrong."

"I told you nothing was."

Sonic looked up, and almost laughed. "You're a terrible liar, Knuckles." He clarified quickly. "I mean you're really bad at it. You didn't have us fooled for a second. But it shouldn't have had to take that before we checked in with you."

Surprise destroyed any attempt at tact and Knuckles had answered before thinking. "We go weeks without talking all the time."

Sonic winced. "Ouch," he said aloud. "Yeah I suppose so. And we shouldn't. I mean me and Tails shouldn't. We're supposed to be the ones who do know how to do the whole friendship thing, right?"

Knuckles shrugged.

"It's okay," Sonic said once again. "Like I said, you can talk or not. I'm just here."

To his own surprise Knuckles did find himself telling Sonic bits of what had happened. Tiny snippets, hours or days apart, while walking his foraging routes or in the moments after waking from nightmare.

There was relief in it of a sort, if only the relief of pulling off an ugly scab, unsure all the while whether the pain would be quick and then over, or if it would bleed afresh.

Tails returned, and Amy and the Chaotix and he let them land, he told them different things, the bits Sonic would listen to but which Knuckles knew he was silently dismissing. The names of those echidnas who'd at least given him a chance. Small details of the way they'd lived.

Things he was more than half afraid would slip away in the half-remembered twilight of his too-long memory.

* * *

Sonic had meant it when he'd said he was not leaving Knuckles alone until he was sure he was all right, but it still made it easier to have the others around to be there some of the time. He could leave him to Tails' chatter or Amy's unembarrassed sympathy or the haphazard but well meant efforts of Vector's crew and take the time to clear his own head. There was something tiring about simply being around such despondency, even if he didn't think he was entirely fooling himself in noticing an improvement.

So he ran. Running to ease tiredness he supposed made no sense but it helped anyway. He didn't leave the Island but it offered more than enough challenges to keep his mind and body busy even after all this time.

He came to a stop back in the flat grassland of the edge, in eye-shot of the Tornado. Amy was retrieving something from it and waved him over.

"How's he doing?" Sonic asked, the inevitable topic of discussion

Amy shrugged. "No better than yesterday but better than a week ago. It's slow - you don't get over something like that overnight."

Sonic scowled.

"He will though, Sonic. It's just at the moment I don't think he can even tell he difference between the upset of thinking he did a poor job as guardian, or because he believes he horrible things they stold him about being one, or because of what they did to him. It's all mixed together. It's bound to take time."

So they waited, visited constantly though no longer watching him every moment.

After a while, Sonic told him they hadn't found Robotnik's crash site. He looked thoughtful for a long time before asking, "Could you kill him to stop him Sonic?"

Sonic;s eyes widened in shock. "Uh..." But Knuckles so rarely _started_ the conversation it was impossible not to answer him.

"I don't know," he admitted. "Maybe not. If I knew that's definitely what I'd be doing? Dunno. But I've smashed up enough stuff with him still in it... I suppose there's been loads of times I didn't really think about it and might have if things had happened differently."

He wanted to ask what had prompted the question but Knuckles was lost in thought again and perhaps it was better not to know.

He was surprised when Knuckles spoke first again, some time later.

"Where do you go when you run on the Island?"

Sonic looked at him curiously. That one was out of the blue.

"Everywhere!" he answered once he realised he was staring.

Knuckles looked out at the way-too-close horizon where the Island dropped away, the woodland coming to an abrupt stop with the sight-line.

"There are places I haven't been since I came back."

"Race you!" Sonic said promptly. It was unplanned but the instant it left his mouth he was curious how Knuckles would react.

He was in fact looking back just as curiously. It must seem to him like a silly desperate attempt to pretend everything was normal, nothing had happened, just a plain old day and a stupid pointless challenge.

"You're faster than me, Sonic," he said eventually. "If I wanted to be somewhere before you I would use the Master Emerald."

Which wasn't, Sonic decided,quite the same thing as _entirely_ dismissing it out of hand.

"Naaa, come on," he pushed, just slightly, "You're not telling me you don't know a few short-cuts over the ground?"

"Sonic...'" Knuckles trailed his name and was that just the slightest trace of the familiar almost-amused exasperation lightening the blank tone? Sonic grinned.

"C'mon... Just a little race. It doesn't even matter who wins."

"Oh, it doesn't?" Knuckles stood up and it was definitely amusement sneaking in, Sonic was sure. Hesitant, wary, fragile, but there.

So they ran.

And it didn't matter who won.


	23. Epilogue: Winter Sunshine

Knuckles' eyes flew open from sleep and for a moment he lay rigid, not daring to move until he'd run through a quick mental check-list of where and what. But it had only been a dream and he was awake and safe and he'd had at least five days of being woken slowly by the dawn before this one disrupted morning. The nightmares were getting fewer, more abstract.

He dismissed this one, because he had plans for the day and he may as well be up as not. He descended the steps as the sun came up over them, and relit a fire from the warm ashes of the previous night's meal in a sheltered spot at the base. He'd gathered most of what he wanted yesterday but the large flat stone he intended to cook on would take quite some time to get decently hot.

He had time for a quick recce round. He'd gone with Tails to Ice Cap yesterday because the fox had been enthusing about the snow and how rarely they got 'proper snow to play in' anywhere near the workshop.

He went the opposite way today, looping back around to his fire by the time the bake-stone was hot enough to sizzle when he flicked water at it.

By the time he heard the Tornado's engine he had what he wanted and was able to greet Sonic with it as he came bounding out of the undergrowth.

"Hi, er... What's this?" Sonic asked

Knuckles hesitated, confused himself by Sonic's confusion.

"It's cake..." he said. "Well, sort of. I didn't have everything that should have gone in, they're kind of... flat... but I tried them out. They're sweet..."

He flushed in embarrassment at the explanation and the feeling was so dangerously close to shame it quickened his pulse and it was an almighty relief when Sonic grinned and took two of the little flat-cakes.

"What's the occasion?"

Wrong-footed again, Knuckles stopped with his own cake halfway to his mouth.

"You told me that didn't matter."

"Well, yeah, it's never the _wrong_ time for cake... It's just unexpected." Sonic let the sentence rise into a question without going so far as to actually ask, for which Knuckles was grateful for he had no answer.

Only that something was owed. Something subtler than reciprocated life or death rescues. Something more than physical safety. He'd been in no actual danger here once he returned. Sonic would have done him no harm by leaving him alone. But he hadn't and Knuckles was glad he hadn't.

He couldn't explain it to himself any more than he could explain the birthday party or Tails' frantic hug, or why he'd raced Sonic across the Island when there was no need to. He couldn't explain it. But he could label it and the label was 'friendship'.

And if that was something his chaos-shaped instincts said he wasn't permitted and the village echidnas had said he wasn't capable of, well then its very existence, inexplicable or not, became one rare, and thus precious, choice carved out for himself in defiance of both.

He hadn't answered Sonic's implied question, and didn't intend to so he parroted it back at him instead.

"Unexpected cake?"

Sonic beamed. "Unexpected cake!"

He slung an arm across Knuckles' shoulders, the movement so sudden than Knuckles was surprised himself to discover he hadn't flinched, that he was, against all probability, momentarily content.

It was a precarious feeling. A feeling like the faintest hint of warmth in winter sunshine when the wind dropped for a moment or two.

"Thanks!" Sonic cut across his thoughts and let him go. "Really." He scrutinised Knuckles for a moment but didn't comment further except to say, "I can have another one yeah? I mean it's fuel, right?"

Knuckles gestured at the bake-stone.

"Help yourself."

They both took another and sat on the steps.

They ate cake as the sun rose higher, the shadows shortened and a new morning crept across the Island.

+END+

 _ **Too fluffy after all that blood and thunder? Meh. Let there be cake ;-)**_


End file.
